The Paul Wells Show - John Ibbitson on Pearson and Diefenbaker's great rivalry

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Author and Globe and Mail writer John Ibbitson joins Paul to discuss his new book, The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada. Ibbitson talks about how the decade-long showdown between these two Prime Ministers set the stage for the world we live in today, and why he believes Diefenbaker has been unfairly maligned in the historical record.   This interview was recorded live at the National Arts Centre.   Subscribe to Paul's Substack for a premium version of this show: paulwells.substack.com   

They fought like hell for a decade. They left a mess and we're living in it. They clotted each other for 10 years through four elections. Getting stuff done but also turning the floor of the House of Commons into the best political theatre in the land. Live from the National Arts Centre, John Ibbotson on his new book about Diefenbaker and Pearson. I'm Paul Wells, the Journalist Fellow-in-Residence at the University of Toronto's Munk School. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. To misquote George Santayana, those who do not remember history are in for a treat, because I have in my hands the rip-roaring tale of two prime ministers, one who seemed carved

from the very Laurentian granite, and another who was such an outsider that many in his own party weren't sure he belonged in it. And yet he led it for what seemed like forever and was terribly stubborn about hanging on to it long after the party had convinced itself that it was time for him to go. Only John Ibbotson, this is literally true, only John Ibbotson among our colleagues on the Hill today could have written this book. A lot of our colleagues would have a hard time writing a book about Stephen Harper and to go any further back in history is almost too much to ask. But John Ibbotson is that rarity among contemporary

journalists, a person who's read history and a person who's made a fair bit of history himself. My secret theory is that the newspaper war between the National Post and the Globe and Mail ended on the day in 1999 when John left the Post to go to the Globe. And I still harbour a grudge over that. Since 2015, after having been Washington Bureau Chief at the Globe, Ottawa Bureau Chief at the Globe, Chief Political Writer, he has been a writer at large for the Globe and Mail, which means we have something in common because I used to be a writer at length for Maclean's. And he is the author of The Duel, Diefenbaker, Pearson, and the Making of Modern Canada. John Ibbotson, thanks for joining us.

Thank you, Paul. That was a great introduction. Let's dive into it. I do want to talk a bit about the line of work that we're still in now and about the history of the work and the history of your own paper, which has been a preoccupation of yours for the last little while. But let's talk about these two gentlemen. And I begin with this quote. as Prime Minister is to let the foibles of the man obscure the accomplishments of his governments. By obsessing over his personal insecurities, his disorganization, his dithering, his displays of pique, posterity has failed to notice his government's impressive and enduring achievements. While the missteps and dust-ups were of their time, the raft of legislative and other accomplishments contributed substantially to the society we live in today. We are the inheritors of Diefenbaker's legacy, and we undervalue that legacy when we focus on the tantrums

rather than on the record. This book is, to some extent, a work of revisionism. Yes, I suppose it is. I grew up with Renegade in Power in my high school library. That was Peter C. Newman's book about Diefenbaker that was issued the year Diefenbaker that was issued the year Diefenbaker was defeated in 1963. And Peter C. Newman's book set the template, beautifully written, savagely critical in its analysis of him. And that became the received wisdom, the wisdom that I

think we grew up with, that he took the biggest majority government up to that time in history and frittered it away, cravenly cancelled the Avro Arrow, enraged Camelot south of the border, and finally was brought down by Lester Pearson, who gave us years of enlightened government, pensions, Medicare, the flag. And that has been pretty much the history we've lived. And yet, over the course of the years in journalism, I would be researching something, and I would go, oh, that immigration policy, that was on Diefenbaker's watch. Oh, that first big step towards Medicare, that happened on Diefenbaker's watch.

And it seems to me that we needed to take a second look at what Diefenbaker had done, or Diefenbaker's government had done, his cabinet had done. I didn't however want to diminish the accomplishments of Mike Pearson because they were formidable. So it seems to me that first of all we should do a dual biography because in many ways they governed not together certainly, but the policy achievements of that decade were achievements that they shared. And then the second reason was it was just such a good story. You know, we've never had a time in our history where one man led the Conservative Party and the other man led the Liberal Party and they clotted each other for ten

years through four elections. Getting stuff done but also turning the floor of the House of Commons into the best political theater in the land. So those were two of the reasons for doing the book. When did you decide you were going to do this book? And what mood are you in when you decide? This is like your sixth or seventh book, isn't it? It depends on how you count. I had wanted to do the book for a very long time because this idea had been forming in my head for a long time that we needed to reconsider Diefenbaker.

But my agent and the publishers were quite adamant that I not. But after Stephen Harper and then after Empty Planet with Daryl Bricker, I said, that's it. I want to do this book and I'm going to do this book and that's all there is to it. And I did this book. It took four years. Of course, my day job is fairly busy as well. But you know, I have never been in a better mood while writing a book. You know, there's that time when the book starts having adjectives in front of it, the blankety-blank book. That never happened with this book.

Oh boy, it's Saturday morning. I get to go to work on the book for another day. I loved writing it. I felt sad only when it was done. I have not yet reached that point in my writing career. I believe I've talked myself into producing two short books in the next year, and I'm nearly despondent when I think about it. But you sound like you are able to set aside specific time to work on the project and that you're actually a fairly ordered fellow as these things go. Yeah, this will get me in trouble back at the shop, but I can't resist.

An editor in Toronto said, we'd like you to do a Zoom video with workers at the Globe to tell them how you can work on a book while still pursuing your career as a Globe journalist. And I said, it's easy. You work all nights through the weekends and you never take a vacation for four years. She said, we can't put you on for that. We're talking about work-life balance.

I said, well, that's it. It's all work, no life. That's the balance uh and either you enjoy that or you don't is there one of your two protagonists that you like more as as a writer dieffenbaker was by far the more fascinating character i mean this was a kid grew up at a time when his German name was a tremendous impediment. He was poor, he was made fun of, he burned with resentment. His family moved to Saskatchewan when he was eight, where they failed to farm. He was on the outside all the time. He was a conservative in Saskatchewan when, as he likes to say, the Liberals were so powerful

that the only thing protecting conservatives in Saskatchewan was the game laws. And as you said, when he finally got into parliament in his 40s, he very quickly was on the outs with the senior ranks of the party. It was a fluke, really. George Drew becoming very ill at a critical moment, and there was no way to step into his shoes. That made him leader. It was only supposed to be for a few months until he lost in 57, but of course he didn't lose in 57. So as a writer, you are drawn to the larger-than-life character that is John Diefenbaker. He's positively tragic in some elements

and comic in others. Mike Pearson was a decent guy, though. I mean, underestimated. A lot of people thought of him as a really nice guy and an amazing jock. He coached more than he taught at the University of Toronto. But a few people saw past that and said yeah but there's a very keen mind lurking back there as well as an ability to get along with just about anyone. And it turns out that if you have a very keen mind and an ability to get along with just about anyone, you were made for a career in external affairs.

But he was always a team player, including when he was prime minister. So he was certainly a much nicer, more decent fellow. But Diefenbaker was more fun to write about. Your book opens with an anecdote from Joe Clark, kind of about Joe Clark, at the funeral for defen baker in 1979 and um uh somebody calls in a bomb threat and it falls to the prime minister to decide whether

they're going to go through with the occasion and you take it from there uh so yeah the rcp come up to uh the prime minister clark and, there's been a bomb threat. We may have to clear the cathedral. It's your decision. And Clark looks around his cabinet, all the liberals, Pierre Trudeau's there, the Supreme Court's there, the Senate's there, and looks up at the casket. He says, the only one who wants us all dead is up there. Let's carry on. By the way, I didn't think it was true.

It sounded too good to be true, right? Yeah. And I read a 1980s retrospective that said, no, it's not true. But that I was talking to Clark for a story. He said, by the way, the book is opening with that event, but apparently you didn't say it. He said, oh, no, yes, I did. That's exactly what I said. The only one who wants us all dead is him.

I said, thank you, Mr. Clark. Let's continue this detour on Clark. I've got a Joe, Mr. Clark. Let's continue this detour on Clark. I've got a Joe Clark anecdote. Okay. The day that Pierre Trudeau died, 20-odd years ago, I was in the National Post office, and I thought, I have to figure out what I'm going to do to add value to this. And I thought to myself, well, you're the parliamentary columnist,

Wells, get up to Parliament and write about what's going on up there as the news spreads. So members of the cabinet were filing out of the House of Commons in tears and things like that. And then Joe Clark comes out. And he, at that point, was leading the tiny ragtag Conservative Party. But he had done some procedural trick in debate that day that had tied the government up in knots. And then Pierre Trudeau died. And so I caught his attention. I said, Mr. Clark, you had just a fantastic day in the House of Commons today. And now no one's ever going to read about it. And he said, he's done it to me again. One of the things I like about your book is that it weaves in that sort of public-private dichotomy that we have.

These people are doing the business of the nation. They're doing it the best they can. And when they fail, they fail spectacularly. But they also have private lives, often tragic lives. And one of the really interesting stories, we'll get to Pearson. private lives, often tragic lives. And one of the really interesting stories, we'll get to Pearson,

but one of the really interesting stories in this book is the story of Edna and then Olive Diefenbaker. And I had barely known there was an Edna Diefenbaker. Tell me a bit about her. Same with me. Fortunately, she had a good biographer, Simma Holt. Diefenbaker met and married her when he was a crusading lawyer in Saskatchewan, Diefenbaker for the defense.

She was a local girl. They were very happy for a long time. They loved each other very much. But as his public persona increased, she became more and more insecure. Eventually there were mental health issues. But I think towards the end, their marriage sort of reconnected. She then developed leukemia and died sadly. And he very soon after, suspiciously soon after, married Oliver Freeman, who he had sort of dated when she was a girl.

But then the Freemans had moved away and he ended up with Edna. And Olive and Dief were also a very happy couple. I'm not sure Olive was all that good for him because she tended to reinforce his paranoia, but they certainly were a team. One of the two would walk slightly behind him and give him political tips as they advanced along the sidewalk? That's right, that was Edna.

Diefenbaker was famous for his ability to remember everybody's name, but it was an acquired skill. And for a while, Edna had the ability to remember everybody's name. And so as they were walking down the street, she would say, okay, that's Joe and Sally Smithers.

Ask about their son Jason's football game. And, oh, how are you doing? So how is your son doing in that football game? And eventually he became very good at doing that all by himself. But it was Ed that taught him. It's extraordinary. It seemed for the longest time like Diefenbaker was going to be one of these comic figures who shows up for every election and gets a handful of seats

and then you don't hear from them again. Like Ed the engineer Turmel, who's been in 960 by-elections across Ontario. I believe he won on his fifth attempt at public office. Yeah, well, again, he was running as a conservative in Saskatchewan. So that itself was heroic. And indeed, when he finally did get into the House in 1940, he was the only MP from Saskatchewan to do it. And in a way, it was also a bit of a fluke, but one that he deserved.

So Diefenbaker would take your money and had a prosperous law firm, but he would also represent anyone who was indigent, Métis people, First Nations people. And this woman killed her husband. He was a vile man, had been violent, and was a vowed Nazi. This was 1940. So she concluded that he was going to kill her.

And she killed him. And Diefenbaker got the jury to acquit. One of the advantages of being in these smaller communities is the jury knows the accused and the victim. And the jury in that case, I don't think, rendered a verdict based exclusively on the law. It was rather what the world was better off for him not being around. And that helped him to win that writing.

But as I say, he deserved it because he had done that so often for so many people. that riding. But as I say, he deserved it because he had done that so often for so many people. One of his last clients as a lawyer was a railway telegraph officer named Jack Atherton. How did he get into trouble? And how did Diefenbaker come into his case? By the way, I think it would make a wonderful movie. Somebody ought to write a play or a movie about Jack Atherton. A troop train on its way to Korea, because this is during the Korean War, to Vancouver. It was on its way to a port. To a port.

The boat would have gone to Korea. Yes, exactly. Collided with the Transcontinental, which was going in the opposite direction. And a bunch of people were killed. Almost all of them servicemen on the train. A telegraph, 19 or 20 years old, Jack Atherton was his name. And he was charged with manslaughter because the Crown and CN

alleged that he had failed to properly take down the instructions for one of the trains to move to a siding. Again, Jack Atherton's father was desperate. Edna was in the hospital dying of leukemia and the father went to Diefenbaker and said, will you represent my son? And he said, I can't, you know, I'm terrible. My wife is dying. Also, this was at his absolute lowest ebb in parliament. He was completely outside the respectable ranks of the Progressive Conservative Party. And the father was desperate and went to Edna in the hospital room and said, would you talk him into it? And she did. She made him promise,

literally as her dying wish, that he would represent Atherton. And so they get to trial. And I think the Deputy Attorney General of British Columbia is the crown. And everybody wants this trial to be dealt with as quickly as possible. We'll send this boy off to jail and no one will have to think about this anymore.

Diefenbaker always had a legal argument and then another guilty party. So the legal argument was, we don't know whether the line faded out, they were unreliable, it could have been that the proper instructions were lost to the boy. were unreliable. It could have been that the proper instructions were lost to the boy. But the real culprit was CN, which had and should have been warned that they needed to put signals in that part of the track, but failed to,

had put cheap wood-sided cars for the troops. And it was those wooden cars that shattered and killed the men. And the deputy attorney general slash Crown got angry and angry and angry and I you've got the exact words but it was something like he says, we're not trying the death of a bunch of army soldiers here. And D. F. Baker went, sir. I think the jury acquitted in 20 minutes. But what I argued in the book was people remembered that. Veterans remembered that. Railway workers remembered that.

Anybody who was what you used to call the common man, I think Doug Ford calls him the little guy, they heard that. They saw that. And I think a bond formed between that community and Diefenbaker, one that stayed with him through thick and thin right through to 65, right through to the leadership convention in 67. He was a populist prime minister. He was Canada's only populist prime minister thus far,

but it was a genuine populism. It was rooted in where he came from and what he felt was a genuine bond with people that he never betrayed. He used to say, they tell me, give him hell, John. And he said, I don't give him hell. I give him the truth and it sounds like hell. That's true. And you foreshadow why I'm interested in this line of argument is that, much like the current leader of the Conservative Party, he is someone who was viewed as beyond the pale,

not really clubbable or acceptable, by the people who normally run Ottawa. How far do you think I should take this comparison? Just about that far, no further. Because it's as far as I'm prepared to go. It's true, Pierre Polyev is well ahead in the polls, and there's a very good chance that he will be our second populist prime minister. And the question is, what kind of populism does he represent? Is it a Diefenbaker-like populism in which government acts to protect and help

the everyday people who need help from the government? Or is it a divisive Trump-like estrangement of one class from another? I certainly hope Pierre Polyev's populism mirrors that of John Diefenbaker's. It would be tragic for the country if it didn't, but I don't have an answer to that. Do you? Okay, well, since you haven't written the book about Polyev and you have written the book about Diefenbaker, tell me how he was a helping and sustaining prime minister despite some of the bad press he got. So let's take two issues that really were things that made me go, wow, that was Diefenbaker?

The first was immigration. Up until 1957, the most racist place in Canada was the Immigration Department. Its job was to keep Canada white and to keep anyone who wasn't, you know, preferably northern, but the very worst southern European from entering this country. And Diefenbaker put Ellen Fairclough, the first woman cabinet minister, by the way, into immigration and told her to clean it up. And she did. It took a long time because basically the senior ranks of the department had to be replaced.

But she stood up in the House in January of 62, announcing a new order in council. And said that from this day on, the color of your skin, the religion, the country you're from, your race, your religion, none of these things are going to matter anymore. You will enter Canada based on your ability to contribute to the country and on nothing else. And that was the beginning of multiculturalism in Canada. Diefenbaker, Pearson's government, took that order in council and transformed it into the point system, which I've argued is probably Canada's single greatest gift to the world. And the point system was an entrenchment. We have it to this very day.

So those two governments, again, one through Northern Council and the other by then advancing that into legislation, gave us the immigration program that we have today. The other was in health care. Diefenbaker extended universal hospital care across the country through funding with the provinces so that anyone who could go to an emergency ward or be scheduled for surgery without having to worry about whether they would be able to afford it.

Tommy Douglas took that and extended it. He was at that point Premier of Saskatchewan and he extended it to full Medicare. Diefenbaker didn't feel he had a mandate for Medicare, but he appointed a World Commission. But who did he appoint to the World Commission? His good buddy Emmett Hall. They'd been law school students together in Saskatchewan. They practiced together, at least in Saskatchewan. Diefenbaker had appointed Hall to the Supreme Court.

Diefenbaker knew 100% what Hall was going to recommend. It just happened that by the time Hall got his report finished, Pearson was prime minister. So it was Pearson who implemented Medicare. But really, universal public healthcare in Canada was a joint product of the Diefenbaker and Pearson governments, and both deserve credit for it. And there's several other fields where we could do that, but I think that gives you a sense. More of my conversation with John Ibbotson in a minute. As you know, here on my show, I get to talk to the people behind the news, the leaders and thinkers tackling the big problems we're facing today.

If you enjoy listening to people telling stories about major events in their own words, then you should listen to the podcast Art of Factuality, hosted by acclaimed novelist Kim Tui. Kim draws on the Canadian Museum of History's archives and exhibits to help understand our past from the people who lived it and she gets deep into conversation with guests whose lives have been shaped by those pivotal moments. Artifactuality is a podcast from the Canadian Museum of History and Antica Productions available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever else you get your podcasts. How did this perennial loser, John Diefenbaker, manage to become prime minister with the largest majority in history up to that point? I'm given to understand he had some help from some prominent liberals like C.D. Howe, Louis Saint Laurent, and Lester Pearson. That would be very true. So C.D. Howe was known as a minister of everything.

You don't even want to call him a deputy prime minister. He was so much more than that throughout the 30s and 40s and 50s. And his last big project was the Trans-Canada Pipeline. But hubris had set in, and he hadn't thought through how he was going to get the legislation through Parliament. So he decided the easy solution was simply to invoke closure before the legislation was even introduced or on the same day that it was introduced. And there was a, it was a huge outcry, went on for weeks and weeks. He finally did get it pushed through. But people noticed a couple of things. They noticed that first of all, Louis Saint Laurent seemed to be quite disengaged as prime minister.

They also noticed that the liberals had been in power since before the mountains were formed. Was it always to be that way? So there was maybe a bit of a window opening. And then at that moment, George Drew, the conservative leader, became literally deathly ill. And he was told he had to step down immediately or he would die. So he resigned. It was December. An election was expected in April. They had to move very quickly. The powers that be didn't have enough of a lock on the process at that point to put their guy in. Diefenbaker always

had been popular with the grassroots of the party. So at the convention, he prevailed. And everybody said, well, that's all right. We'll lose the election of 57. We always lose elections, after all. And we'll put somebody else in after Diefenbaker. But there was a mood in the land, and Diefenbaker won a minority government. Saint Laurent stepped down. Pearson was appointed his successor. Pearson very foolishly said, at the very first opportunity, I'm going to bring this government down. The very first opportunity he tried to, but he actually said, don't resign. He said, you should resign and hand the government over to the liberals because we're used to doing this sort of thing and we would do it better than you. And Diefenbaker

just tore him to shreds in the House, just tore him to shreds, and dissolved the parliament, and we had an election. By the way, I didn't know when I started it, is there a more amazing campaign slogan than the conservative campaign slogan of 58? Follow John? Follow John. That's how closely the bond had formed

and how wildly popular he was. Follow John, and it led to the biggest majority government in the country's history. We know that everything in that quote that I read about Diefenbaker, all of his foibles and suspicion, and that all of that was true, and that nonetheless he was an effective prime minister. How good of an opposition leader was Mike Pearson? Mike Pearson was actually a really good opposition leader because he didn't spend much time opposing. He had a very small caucus, but they were all very experienced former ministers. He was not. He had just arrived. Well, no, he arrived as a leader. He had been external affairs minister,

but he didn't know much about domestic policy. So he made the very smart decision to let a trio of veteran former cabinet ministers lead the debate in the House, while he and Tom Kent, his aide, set about renewing the party, helped by his good friend Walter Gordon, the very rich accountant, who set about fixing the finances of the party. So Pearson wisely used that period from 58 to 62 to rebrand the Liberal Party as something more over on the left, younger, more moderate, more modern, and better financed than it had been in the past. It was only Pearson's singular inability to campaign. He was a terrible campaigner. He would have been the first to tell you, I'm a terrible campaigner. That allowed Diefenbaker to squeak back in in 62.

And it was only his inability to campaign that prevented majority governments in 63 and 65. Part of his campaign idea, if not his slogan, in that climactic campaign that he won and he became prime minister was the notion of 60 days of decision. Hundred days of decision? 60. 60. That was the problem.

What happened on the 60th day? Disaster. So, it was becoming clear that they weren't going to win a majority government. And there was a bit of a panic in what we today would call the war room. And Keith Davies said, you need to announce 100 days of decision. That's what Kennedy did when he was campaigning. And we're going to do this, this, this, this, and this, all in the first hundred days. And Pearson, who read too much, said, we can't use a hundred days because that's the amount of time that Napoleon spent before returning from Elba. And people

will get that comparison and deride us for it. Nobody else thought that there would be a quick Napoleon uptake from the electorate. So Pearson said it has to be 60 days of decision. And the mistake was he had promised a whole bunch of stuff, and now he only has 60 days in which to do it. And that led Walter Gordon, who is now finance minister, to put forward a famous budget in which, to boil it down, he was going to tax foreign investment coming into the country.

The Americans took this very, very badly. And within about four or five weeks, pretty much the entire budget had been gutted. And they were talking about resigning. In the end, Gordon became quite an effective finance minister. He did a good job. But that first budget was a disaster, and it was a disaster because of Napoleon returning from Elba.

One of the first big books of Canadian politics that I read was Tom Kent's memoir, A Public Purpose, about being the policy advisor to Pearson. And what struck me, Tom Kent, who's a mild-mannered fellow, he was an editorialist for The Economist, who moved to Winnipeg to be an editor at the Winnipeg Free Press at a time when that was a thing that a sane person would do. And then he became Pearson's guy.

And in that memoir, he was cordially furious with Pearson for the duration of the book. He found him a ditherer. him a ditherer, he found him a guy who was too, a bit of a weathervane, a little too worried about political effects. That clashed with the memory that so many of our colleagues have of Lester Pearson. Do you buy that critique? Was he maybe less than perfectly effective? Well, I was bemused by it only because Judy Lamarche did the same thing in her memoirs and Walter Gordon did the same thing in his memoirs. So this kind, decent, beloved Mike Pearson certainly seemed to rub his friends the wrong way during his years in power. And I don't know what was going on there. There's a scene, Act I of the Goethe-Munzinger affair, and oh my God, the Goethe-Munzinger affair.

We've lost the ability to do scandal in this country. We once were a great country when it came to scandal, but not anymore. At any rate, Pearson has gotten wind of all the people that Goethe-da Monsinger slept with inside the Diefenbaker cabinet. And he summons Diefenbaker to the prime minister's office and says, in essence, stop tormenting me on the floor of the house. If you don't, I'm going to bring up Monsinger. And Diefenbaker said, go ahead, bring it up. I don't care.

We did nothing wrong. And tempers flared. care. We did nothing wrong. And tempers flared. At one point, according to Dieffenbaker, Pearson sort of walked around and put his hand on his shoulder and said, we shouldn't speak to each other like this, Mike. And Mike said, well, you're the one who brought me in here and warned me about Munsinger. And Pearson said, I'm not really a politician. I'm just a diplomat. Whether Pearson really thought that or on his bad days really thought that. But certainly, Pearson never claimed to be a great politician. And certainly, those closest to him agreed. What did these two guys think of each other?

Initially, it was respectful. We don't need to get into the details, but there was an American witch hunt against a Canadian diplomat. This was in the early 50s. Pearson, as external affairs minister, was defending the diplomat. And Diefenbaker, as external affairs critic, also defended the diplomat, earning a letter of thanks. So they were cordial up until that point. But if you had a conservative and a liberal leader, each in power for 10 years, they would

not be best of friends at the end of the 10 years, whoever they were. And again, I think Diefenbaker in some ways was happier after he lost because he was back in opposition. He could just tear strips off the government. There's a famous quote, I'm going to get it wrong now because I don't have the book in front of me, but Diefenbaker was in full flight eviscerating some cabinet figure and somebody tried to distract him from the back benches of the Liberal Party. And he's, Mr. Speaker, a great game hunter is not distracted by rabbits. So I think Diefenbaker treated Pearson the way he would have treated anybody who was on the opposite side of the bench. But Pearson came to truly loathe and despise Diefenbaker, because Diefenbaker made his life miserable.

One of the people you had helping you for this book was John Baird, Stephen Harper's foreign minister, one of the world's great Diefenbaker fans. What came out of your conversations with Baird? John was a tremendous

help. The help took the form of I did the first draft, he went through the first draft and found about 500 things he disagreed with and about 492 of them I fixed. The other eight I said no. So he was a great first reader. I was really lucky with this book in that way.

John Baird went through the manuscript and John English went through the manuscript. John English was the biographer of Lester Pearson, this great two-volume biography of Pearson. And I asked him about something and told him about the book, and he said, oh, well, if you want me to look at it, let me know. And I said, here. And he, again, went through the manuscript very, very carefully

and made lots of points about both Dieffenbecker and Pearson. I would say the book is about 50% better because of those two. Is it nervous making to hand off a manuscript to people who you know will take issue with it? Nope, because everything they catch, you won't. And I'd rather have them catching it in the first draft stage than you pointing out something up here. Please don't now point out something up here. I got nothing. Have you heard back from Andrew Cohen yet? Andrew Cohen or Andrew Cohen? Cohen, who wrote a short book about Pearson.

Oh, that's right. No, I haven't heard back. The book only has been out for a week, and I haven't heard from Andrew. But he knows about the book. We have discussed it. Now, here's the $64 question. What is all of this?

I read subtitles because I've sweated over subtitles. This is Diefenbaker, Pearson, and the Making of Modern Canada. What of modern Canada is in this book? They operated at a time of deep consensus in Canadian politics and in Western politics. And that consensus went something like this. Out of the Depression came war. And big government won that war. And big government prevented us from going back into Depression.

government won that war. And big government prevented us from going back into depression. The American GI Bill and the Canadian equivalent had training, education, housing supports, job supports for the vets coming back. And as a result, they essentially created the suburban middle class. And the suburban middle class thought this was good and we should do more. And so the modern welfare state that we have today, well, what are its elements? Universal public health care, universal public education, income supports for those who need it, and pensions, the Canada Pension Plan and its supplements.

Those were all advanced during John Diefenbaker and Lester Pearson's governments. Pierre Trudeau enhanced them, Brian Mulroney enhanced them, but the foundations of that modern Canada, that modern welfare state, were in place by a centennial. Oh, by the way, centennial, John Diefenbaker's government approved the decision to hold a fair in Montreal in 1967. Mike Pearson cut the ribbon. And Diefenbaker also, his Conservative Party was also very interested in the notion of a new flag for Canada, which surprised me.

Well, it got mentioned in the 50s, I think. I mentioned it in passing because it was mentioned in passing in their platform. But no, one of the things that I talk about in the book is the big difference between Pearson and Diefenbaker. And by the way, it is 50-50 in the book. It's natural that we talk more

about Diefenbaker at events like this because the book tries to reassess Diefenbaker's prime ministership. But it is a 50-50 book. And the one big difference between Pearson and Diefenbaker, as I say in the book, is that Pearson could grow and Diefenbaker couldn't. Pearson could see that the British empire was on the wane and that Washington was the new Rome and that Canada was going to have to realign its interests within a new American-dominated Western alliance. Diefenbaker couldn't see it. He always believed in the empire and always wanted Canada to be a part of it and just would not recognize or accept that Britain itself was trying to get out of the Commonwealth and into Europe.

Pearson also knew that within that context, Canada needed to be more confident of itself, to be more assertive as a nation. And that meant it had to have a flag, and that flag could not have the Union Jack on it. The idea for Diefenbaker that the Canadian flag would not contain the Union Jack was anathema, and he fought it tooth and nail for more than six months, and lost, and deserved to lose. There's almost a throwaway sentence early on, when young Mike Pearson is a university professor who's flirting with going into the public service, where you say, Vincent Massey took such a liking to him that he even loaned some of his David Milne paintings to the Pearsons. And I think there's maybe been no more Toronto sentence ever written.

Vincent Massey to Mike Pearson, please, you must have some of our Milnes. Take the Milnes, young boy. Loaned, mind you, only loaned. Was he the sort of creature of advantage that outsiders can smell a mile off and learn to resent in the cradle? Did he just get it all handed to him? No, no, no.

He, again, he was a minister's son. It was an itinerant life moving from village to village. They weren't rich, though ministers are poor and weren't even in those days. But he got to Oxford on a scholarship. But it was at Oxford that people began to notice Mike Pearson. Mike loved Oxford and Oxford loved him. And it wasn't because he was all that Laurentian. It's because Pearson was demonstrably smart

and exuded a sense of trust. You could trust Mike Pearson. You could tell him something and it would stay with Mike Pearson. You could ask Mike to solve a particularly knotted problem and he would solve it. And early in his 20s, it became clear to powerful men that this was someone who should be brought along. And they brought him along.

But it was his skill that earned him that respect that this was someone who should be brought along, and they brought him along. But it was his skill that earned him that respect for what was really a fairly meteoric career. He was hired for external, just as the Depression was starting, puttered along, was number two in London when war broke out, was ambassador to the United States at the end of the war. Not only ambassador to the United States,

but one of the architects of post-war reconstruction, and one of the first Canadians whose name could appear in American headlines without an explanation. The word Laurentian has come up a couple times. Am I correct in thinking that you invented the term Laurentian elite? It was a speech that I gave after the 2011 election, and I was trying to explain what was happening. that I gave after the 2011 election, and I was trying to explain what was happening. And my argument was that the country had been run by consensus throughout its entire history, and that consensus was forged among the academic and political and journalistic bureaucratic elites in Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa. By the way, the speech, then the book that came out of the speech, said they did a very

good job, right? If you thought Canada was a great country, hats off Laurentian elite. But the Laurentian elite was being challenged by two things. The enormous numbers of immigrants who were coming into the 905. So we had a new immigrant suburban middle class, and they weren't naturally liberal. They would be more socially and economically conservative, and had voted for Stephen Harper in that election. And the Laurentian elites did not understand or particularly care about the West, and the West was rising in power and influence.

And so I said, there's a natural conservative alternative to the Laurentians emerging that could dominate this century. And then Justin Trudeau came along. Nonetheless, Daryl Bricker, who wrote the book with me, and I maintain that however resilient, stubborn even, the Laurentian elite might be in clinging to power that coalition of suburban 905 and the West remains available to the Conservatives as an alternative. Let's not predict the next election because people in our line of work are asked to predict the next election five times a day. Over the next

20 years what's going to happen to that play of power centres that you described? Sure, don't predict the next election, but do predict the next generation. I think we will have that dynamic. Ontario and Quebec are going to continue to be the majority of the population. But will the Annex and the Glebe and the island be able to continue to dominate the public policy debate. I think already that is no longer the case. I think already the West is having a greater say in how the country is run, and I think that will continue. And I really do think our politics will eventually increasingly reflect our reality, which is the suburbs

are not something that you drive through on your way to the cottage. The suburbs are the country. The suburbs are Canada. And if you don't get that, you're not going to get very far as a politician. I wrote a damn good book about Stephen Harper, and then you wrote a book about Stephen Harper, and I thought, well, good for John. But the thing is, in the first 10 pages, you walloped me because you understood that Stephen Harper is a suburban Ontarian,

not an Albertan, and I had missed that. So to hell with you. Okay. I'm not going to say anything about that. Look, they both won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize, so come on. Yeah, that's right. They were both good books. And I'm sure you can borrow them from your parents if you want a copy.

One often curses an author by asking at the launch of his new book what his next project is. But in your case, we actually know. You have been working on a history of the Globe and Mail or wrangling a history of the Globe and Mail. Tell us about that. Yes, so there's this moment in the duel. It's 1957, and John Diefenbaker, it appears, has won a minority government, but Louis Saint Laurent doesn't want to acknowledge that fact,

so he refuses to send the government plane, and Diefenbaker has to fly commercial. And, of course, what will become Air Canada loses his luggage. And Clark Davey was a young reporter for the Globe and Mail. How young? Well, Clark Davey hired me for the Ottawa Citizen when he was publisher in 1988. So he had to have been about 11 at that point. Anyway, Davey's on the phone filing his update to the Globe.

And he sees Diefenbaker storming around. And he says, hang on, I want to retop this thing. And he retops it with an enraged on Diefenbaker story, don't you know who I am, the prime minister of this country? Diefenbaker was furious, of course. And that night, as I was thinking about it, I thought, you know what, we need a history of the Globe and Mail. There has been so much of this country's history

that the Globe has not just reported on, but influenced one way or another. And we need to tell the story of the paper. And initially I thought, well, once I've done the duel, I'll start on the Globe. But I had worked on a project for The Citizen when Jim Travers was editor-in-chief there. And Jim had commissioned me to preside over a series of essays on the history of

Ottawa for that paper's 175th, or 150th, I forget which now, I'm sorry, my apologies. So the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this was the correct approach. And I went to David Walmsley, the Globe's editor in chief, and said, we should write 30 essays, each of them 2,500 words, about the Globe and Mail in the life of Canada. And we should run those essays every other week throughout 2024, which is the 180th anniversary of the Globe, and we should then publish it as a book at the end of the year.

And David did not say you should go back to work now. Instead, he took the idea to Philip Crawley, the publisher. Philip Green did it on the spot. So for the last two years, I've been working as general editor on top of the dual and on top of the column to preside over that essay project, which is now almost complete. The entire project will be sent to McClellan and Stewart, which is going to publish it in about three weeks' time. And then you'll start to see the essays appearing in the Globe and Mail. The first one appears on January 6th of 2024 and then you'll see them rolling out through

the course of the year and then it will come out as a book. And we have all had many conversations about the state of journalism in our country but I think it's a testament to the Globe that we are a paper that, not only are the bureaus still up and running, not only are we fully staffed, but we can take on one of the largest projects in the paper's history and pull it off. It's almost the only advice I give to young reporters and any news organization that seeks my counsel, which is don't treat today like another day. Treat today like it could be your chance to do something big and memorable

and I'm glad to hear that the Globe is doing that and that you're in charge that's all I got John Ibbotson, thank you for writing this book and for sharing your thoughts on the book with us, really appreciate it Paul, it's been a treat Thanks to the National Arts Centre for hosting this conversation. John Ibbotson's book is called The Duel,

Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada. It's on sale now. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Our producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producers are Laura Reguer and Stuart Cox. Our opening theme music is by Kevin Bright

and our closing theme music is by Andy Milne. Go to paulwells.substack.com to subscribe to my newsletter. We'll be back next Wednesday.