The Great Depression

by Pierre Berton

  “I can see others are trying to use me,” he confided to his diary that night, “… but I don’t intend to be drawn into anything unless the King himself brings the subject up.”

  But the monarch had no intention of doing anything of the sort. The following day, October 27, Mackenzie King presented himself at Buckingham Palace in his soft morning coat, silk hat, and Gladstone cufflinks. Following a ceremony that saw the installation of three new imperial privy councillors, Edward asked the Canadian to stay behind for a few minutes. King thought he looked much better, less dissipated, more buoyant, his hair still thick and golden, his eyes bright and clear. Moments like these in the presence of the high and the mighty always produced in Mackenzie King a sense of awe and a kind of reverse humility – a wonder that he of all people should have risen to such heights. He could not help noticing the portrait of Queen Victoria immediately opposite and thinking “how stranger than fiction was the fact that I should be looking at this portrait while standing in the presence of her grandson, the present King, not only as one of his advisers but as a Prime Minister.”

  He was not given any opportunity, however, to tender any advice on the one matter that was about to consume the nation. The two men covered a range of subjects from the Vimy pilgrimage to Mitch Hepburn (who the King thought was a communist). They talked of war and peace. Edward said he intended to keep England out of war “at all costs,” even (“Let me say this to you within these four walls”) at the cost of giving up some of Britain’s colonies – a revelation that, had he known it, would have disturbed Winston Churchill, then trying to rally a party of “King’s men” to support the monarch.

  They talked candidly, even intimately, but there was no mention of Edward’s obsession with an American divorcée. The closest they came was when the Canadian prime minister, on taking his leave, told Edward that the whole future of the Empire depended upon him, that he, the monarch, had the power to save civilization, and that he must follow “what he knew in his heart was the right thing to do.” That was laying it on a bit thick, and it caused Edward to draw back a little and in a shy sort of way murmur that Mackenzie King was saying too much. “No, sir,” said the Prime Minister, “you are far too modest.”

  When he returned to Canada the pressure continued, this time from the Governor General, who said that Canada was the key to the situation; Edward would be influenced by the senior dominion. King told him, in effect, to keep out of it. By late November he was convinced that Edward intended to marry his paramour “regardless of consequences.” Privately, he wasn’t sure those consequences would be fatal “either to the Empire or world relationship which the English aristocracy in particular believe they will be.” King’s long suspicion – it amounted to disdain – of the aristocracy comes through in the diary entry: “His action would be of submarining a lot of the false and rotten life of society, and in accord with a showdown on realities, such as the world is witnessing in its social revolutions of today. The King clearly is throwing in his lot with the masses, and will be prepared to defy the classes. It may be the saving of the Crown and of revolution.…”

  But King wanted to make sure that if a crisis came Canada would not be blamed for it. The latest dispatches from London incensed him because they suggested that Canada was taking the lead in trying to resolve the matter. King immediately put a muzzle on Vincent Massey. He was not to represent the Canadian government or attend any conferences on the crisis. King himself would communicate directly with London, not through the High Commissioner: “By putting a spoke in that practice, I have secured communication direct and uncoloured by the atmosphere in Government circles in London.” The British wanted King to cable directly to Edward, tendering his advice. That the Prime Minister refused to do.

  But on December 8, with abdication almost certain, he changed his mind and decided that a letter sent directly to the King through the Governor General would at last be appropriate. Couched in sympathetic terms, it would stress the fact that Canada believed he should renounce Wallis Simpson and remain on the throne.

  To his surprise, he found the Cabinet divided. J.L. Ilsley, the Minister of National Revenue, said he didn’t want to grovel before a King who had acted in a worthless way and didn’t deserve any expression of sympathy. Neither Dunning nor Lapointe, two of his senior ministers, favoured a compassionate message.

  The Prime Minister, however, was “unwilling to have my worst enemy undergo the torture of mind and soul which the King must be suffering.” It was their duty, he told his ministers, to save the Empire, if possible, from such a calamity as an abdication. Once again, Mackenzie King had shifted his position. What he had earlier seen as a possible “saving of the Crown” he now presented as a potential disaster. And he now found himself veering toward the King’s side. He blamed “fashionable society” as much as he blamed Edward for the impasse.

  The Cabinet reluctantly came round. The Prime Minister deleted a sentence linking the Cabinet’s view with that of the country as a whole and struck out the final sentence, which referred to the rejoicing there would be if the King made the right decision. “Rejoicing,” the Cabinet felt, was too strong a word. Even after sending the official letter, King continued to vacillate; in his diary he wrote that “the King’s usefulness was pretty well gone now, and it would be better if he was off the throne.”

  The Prime Minister’s purpose had been to make it clear that Canada was in no way responsible for the abdication and had, on the contrary, tried to save the monarch from such a step. As usual, King’s reasoning was circuitous. He didn’t want Canada on the record as not having tendered advice, but advice offered at an earlier stage might, he thought, have been seen as an effort to force abdication. On the other hand, “advice at the present time would make clear our desire to see the institution of the monarchy held in the regard and reverence to which it should be held.”

  For most of the fall, Canadians had been agog over the royal drama, which served as a focus to relieve the boredom of the Depression. They learned of it from their own press, which was not inhibited by any self-censorship, and also from the American newsmagazines, which gave the story elaborate coverage. Large numbers sympathized with the King, if not with the elegant divorcée who was clearly his mistress. They had idolized him in the twenties during his well-publicized tours of the country – a glamorous bachelor, indeed a true Prince Charming, with his flaxen hair and his ready smile. In a sense they felt he was one of them; after all, he had purchased a ranch in Alberta! He symbolized all the glitter of the twenties, but now, in a darker decade, even that glitter was fading. When he abdicated on December 11, the entire country went into a tailspin.

  There were those who felt betrayed by their sovereign, as they had felt betrayed by their own leaders. Mackenzie King put it into words when he wrote in his diary: “If that is the kind of man he is, it is better he should not be longer on the Throne.” It was inconceivably sad, King thought, that “a man who has the highest position any man could hold or has ever held, could fall into the deepest abyss – be so blinded by his lust as to lose all moral sense, and sense of what he owes … to the subjects all over the world.…”

  Just before five that afternoon, the Prime Minister and his Cabinet had gathered to hear Edward’s abdication speech, broadcast by short wave. Mackenzie King would always remember the scene: his ministers grouped in a semi-circle around the short-wave radio, he himself in the prime minister’s chair, the oddly affecting voice distorted by distance. “As we listened to the King’s voice, there were times when it seemed almost as though it were being given through a terrific storm, as if the elements were raging and blowing across sea and land; a more dramatic effect could not possibly have been arranged had it been deliberately planned.”

  As they left the room, King remarked that history would record that Edward had been in some sense a sacrificial lamb; that he had given his life, as others had in the past, that others might be saved; that the person who really sought the abdication
was Mrs. Simpson. That was King’s romanticism coming to the fore. History has not been so kind.

  Meanwhile, he was faced with what was for him a daunting task. With the new king, George VI, on the throne, he would have to compose a message of congratulation. But what was he to say? He didn’t want to employ the conventional clichés, which nobody believed. The material he’d been given by his staff he found sycophantic – not at all the right tone for the prime minister of an independent Commonwealth nation.

  Desperate to find a proper opening for the message, he pored over books of prayers until his mind was “so weary I could not think of their words.” Midnight arrived before he finally worked out a cable that satisfied him. He did not give it to a secretary but phoned the telegraph office himself to dictate it and, still unsure of the wording, apparently told the clerk to hold the message.

  He prepared for bed, but after he had undressed it occurred to him that the words “Prime Minister” should be appended to his name. It was now 12:30; he picked up the telephone and ordered the change. Then he worried that he perhaps should have also added the phrase “of Canada” after that designation.

  He tossed in his bed, unable to sleep. He called for his little dog, Pat, to comfort him. Finally, he concluded that he had used the wrong words to the monarch and padded out to the library, searching in vain for a copy of the original message. But in his secretary’s office he came upon a file of material that had been prepared for him at the time of the old king’s death. That gave him some clues.

  Back in bed he continued to worry. He probably should have used the word “respect” instead of “devotion.” And wasn’t “affection” a little too cosy? Something else would be preferable. He got out a book of synonyms and decided to replace it with “attachment.”

  It was now 4:30 a.m. The Prime Minister of Canada had spent more than eight hours trying to write a one-paragraph message of congratulation. He called the telegraph office again and began to work over the contents of the wire with the clerk on duty. He had used the word “Majesty” twice; once was quite enough. He replaced the second “Majesty” with the simple pronoun “you.” He returned to bed and continued to worry. At five, he rose once more to revise the message. He took out “devotion,” which he had applied to the Canadian people, and substituted “respect.” He took out the adjective “loyal,” which had defined “homage.” He thought he had used the word “respectfully” once too often. He cut out the second one.

  And thus, having made obeisance to his new sovereign without appearing to grovel, the Prime Minister of His Majesty’s loyal but autonomous dominion toddled off to bed and tried his best to get a little sleep.

  1937

  1

  The rocky road to Spain

  2

  Dead in the water

  3

  Mitch Hepburn v. the CIO

  4

  The Prime Minister and the dictator

  5

  The black blizzard

  6

  Bypassing democracy

  1

  The rocky road to Spain

  Tourist travel in the Depression years was not for the impoverished. Why, then, were so many shabbily dressed men applying for passports and flocking to the steamship offices in suspiciously large numbers? A good many claimed they were going to the Paris Exposition; others said they planned to study art on the Left Bank. Yet they didn’t act like artists and they certainly didn’t look like tourists. Most appeared to be labouring men; many spoke with an accent so thick they were hard to understand; others had trouble finding a bank manager or a clergyman to sign their passport applications.

  In fact, these young men were going to war. By mid-January Ottawa awoke to what was happening: an organized effort was under way to recruit volunteers to fight in Spain on the Loyalist side. By that time some six hundred Canadians were on their way or had already arrived.

  On a per capita basis, Canada supplied more volunteers to the Spanish cause than any other country except France. The casualties were appalling. Of the 1,488 Canadians who fought on Spanish soil, 721 never returned. A few remained in Europe; the rest were killed.

  Although the Spanish Civil War is now seen as the curtain-raiser to the world war that followed and was so viewed by many of those who volunteered, the governments of France, England, the United States, and Canada remained strictly neutral. France had closed the Spanish border the previous fall, which meant that the bulk of the men trying to get to the war were forced to slip surreptitiously over the windswept Pyrenees – a dangerous, nerve-racking, and exhausting journey.

  By April, passports issued in Canada were being stamped “not valid for Spain.” Under the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act, anybody who volunteered or anybody who helped a volunteer could be sent to prison for two years. It required ingenuity, careful organization, and, above all, money to move hundreds of men from the various cities across the water to France and then over the mountains to assembly points on the Spanish side of the border. This was a task that the Communist party, with its long experience in clandestine organization, was equipped to undertake.

  The men who fought in Spain – most of them with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion in the International Brigade – were not all communists, but the great majority were certainly communist sympathizers. As one of them, Ron Liversedge, later wrote, “if there were any pure adventurers, they were a small minority.…” An extraordinary number, perhaps as many as half, were, like Liversedge, veterans of the B.C. relief camps.

  Liversedge’s reasons for volunteering were typical of many: “The life that I had led over the past five years as an active member of the unemployed organizations had made the decision for me. I think that the terrible life of the Canadian unemployed during the depression … the boxcars, the flop-houses, the demonstrations … police clubbing men, women, and even children unconscious on the city streets for asking for food, the twenty cents a day slave camps, the ‘On to Ottawa trek,’ all this had conditioned the men who volunteered to go to Spain to make the decision without much soul searching.” Two prominent activists in the trek, Red Walsh and Lucien Tellier (better known as Lou Summers), both fought in Spain.

  Bill Beeching joined the Communist party immediately after the Regina riot and volunteered for Spain after reading a pamphlet by Tim Buck predicting a world war if the Loyalist forces lost. Jack Lawson, who spent three days in a Regina jail for rioting and was then given a suspended sentence, set out for Spain as soon as the war began.

  The motives of others were mixed. Ross Russell, a twenty-three-year-old assistant manager of a Woolworth’s store in Montreal, began to realize there would be no further promotions for him in the organization because he was Jewish. Spain was in his mind, but it was a ringing address at the Mount Royal Arena by Norman Bethune, just back from the battlefield, that fired him up for action. Bethune’s appeal was, for him, “the cherry on the sundae.”

  Mike Hyduk of Edmonton was fed up trying to make a living as cook and dishwasher in his brother’s café, where a meal cost only fifteen cents. He attended a meeting sponsored by the Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, was impressed by what he heard, and with fifteen others volunteered. “I figured I was doing the right thing,” Hyduk said.

  It is difficult now to conjure up the wide-eyed idealism of those years. Here were young men, buffeted by circumstances and embittered by neglect, prepared to lay down their lives for a cause. As one early volunteer, Marvin Penn of Winnipeg, put it, “the only thought in everybody’s mind was to do a job. Nobody worried about themselves. Nobody give a darn that they were going to get killed.” Jules Paivio of Sudbury was one of many who didn’t expect to come back. Born into a family of left-wing Finnish immigrants, he went to Spain because “it was an opportunity for a real purpose in life.… I didn’t have any notions it would be easy … that I would return whole.”

  The Canadian government and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police completely misunderstood the motivation of these dedicated y
oung men. Both Commissioner MacBrien in Ottawa and Assistant Commissioner Wood in Regina believed that “these youths are being sent to Spain, largely for the sake of gaining experience in practical revolutionary work and will return to this country to form a nucleus of a trained corps.” In fact, many who came back arrived just in time to volunteer to fight for their own country in the war against Hitler.

  “Just what the hell are you guys going to get out of all this? That’s what I want to know,” a burly immigration officer said to Lionel Edwards at the U.S. border. Edwards, who had quit a job in Alberta to make the journey, didn’t bother to reply. “Okay – on your way,” said the officer, who seemed to know exactly where Edwards and his friends were going.

  This was an odd war, a secret war, a war without recruiting posters or recruiting offices, without marching bands or waving flags, without any public call to arms or patriotic editorials in the press. It was also a devilishly hard war to reach; it was even hard to find out how to reach it. Nobody, including officials of the Communist party, was urging young men to enlist; quite the opposite. To volunteer to fight in Spain was rather like trying to locate somebody who knew how to get a bottle of bootleg gin.

  Jules Paivio, having left his job at Eaton’s in Sudbury, went to Montreal hoping to look up some Finnish friends who, he heard, knew some other Finns who had managed to enlist. When he got in touch with them, he was told he’d have to go back to Toronto. There the Young Communist League had been deputed to screen volunteers for Spain. Ross Russell, who lived in Montreal, also found it difficult to join. He approached Fred Rose, a prominent Communist and future M.P., who tried to talk him out of it; but Russell was determined and left, not for Toronto, but for Quebec City, where passage was arranged for him.