He then called for a federal election. In September , King's government staged a comeback, claiming seats and The motion is accepted or rejected by a Parliamentary vote. If the motion is accepted, the government must either resign or dissolve parliament and call another federal election. He secured an overwhelming majority, claiming seats out of By comparison, the Conservatives captured 39 seats and the Social Credit party won His intermittent terms in office spanned from December to June , September to August and October to November A vociferous writer, King kept a journal from the time he was a student at the University of Toronto in up until his death in A substantial work, his journal entries comprise close to 30, pages and more than 7,, words.
In preparation for the federal election, a number of Canadians are going online and "vote-swapping" in an effort to…. Canadians throw out the Liberals in favour of Stephen Harper's Conservatives in The environmentally-minded Green Party aims to gain recognition and votes in the election. Kim Campbell's conservatives suffer a debilitating loss in the federal election. In November, King abruptly agreed to send some of the home-defence forces to Europe; the decision was grudgingly accepted by French Canadians.
The Liberals narrowly won the election. King did not play a decisive role in the postwar era. He preferred a minimal role for the government at home and abroad. He was persuaded to resign as prime minister in and was succeeded by Louis St-Laurent.
King died two years later. King kept a detailed personal diary for much of his life. The publication of C. He was presented as leading an almost Jekyll-and-Hyde existence. Mackenzie King has continued to intrigue Canadians. Critics argue that his political longevity was achieved by evasions and indecision, and that he failed to provide creative leadership.
His defenders argue that he gradually changed Canada, a difficult country to govern, while keeping the nation united. Woodsworth View a brief video about James Shaver Woodsworth and his negotiations with Prime Minister Mackenzie King over the creation of the first elements of Canada's social-security system.
A Heritage Minute from Historica Canada. See also related learning resources. Click on "The Memory Project Link" to access this remarkable online collection to hear interviews with individual veterans from all branches of the Canadian Armed Forces.
See also related digitized artefacts and memorabilia. From Historica Canada. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. Remember me. I forgot my password. Why sign up? Create Account. Suggest an Edit. Enter your suggested edit s to this article in the form field below. Accessed 12 November In The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published October 15, ; Last Edited February 04, Blair, "William Lyon Mackenzie King".
The Canadian Encyclopedia , s. Thank you for your submission Our team will be reviewing your submission and get back to you with any further questions. Thanks for contributing to The Canadian Encyclopedia. Article by H. Leader of the Liberal Party , and prime minister for almost 22 of those years, King was the dominant political figure in an era of major changes. King during the election campaign of Yousuf Karsh. Library and Archives Canada, C He assumed that Canada would have to continue to defend itself vigilantly against British predilection for centralization but any defence would be easier now that the autonomy of the dominions had been formally conceded.
As before, King was not concerned that the Commonwealth might not survive. He believed that ethnic ties and a common political heritage were powerful bonds. Independence was not an option he considered, presumably because membership in the Commonwealth would not encroach on Canadian autonomy and would give Canada a status and a security it would not have as an independent country.
Back in Canada, King had to deal with continuing regional dissatisfaction. The Maritimes were aggrieved because they were not sharing in the prosperity of the rest of the country and were convinced that federal tariffs and railway freight rates were to blame. The prairie premiers complained that federal reluctance to relinquish control of their natural resources was discriminatory. The premiers of Ontario and Quebec objected to the limitations placed on their authority to develop hydroelectric power by federal jurisdiction over navigable streams.
At the Dominion-Provincial Conference of King used his conciliatory skills and held out concessions to each region if they raised no objections to the offers made to the other regions.
And so the Maritimes got higher subsidies and lower freight rates, the prairie provinces got control of their natural resources without losing a compensatory subsidy, and Ontario and Quebec got the right to distribute water power developed on navigable streams.
This relative political harmony was linked to the prosperity of the mid s but it can also be seen as the end of a long era of nation building. Most of the arable land offered to homesteaders on the prairies was now occupied and for the first time in half a century the federal policy of assistance to agricultural immigrants was questioned.
Railway policy was also being modified. The third prong, the tariffs, was a major subject of political debate — farmers still deemed them too high — but they were no longer a dynamic factor in the Canadian economy. King had no new policy to substitute for the old National Policy. He did reintroduce old-age pensions after the election but he did not follow up with other measures of social security for individuals in an increasingly urban and industrial Canada.
Instead of spending the increased revenue which prosperity provided, the government used its annual surplus to reduce its debt and in —28 it lowered the sales and income taxes. King saw no reason to question this frugality. The Republican victory south of the border in introduced a possible complication because President Herbert Clark Hoover was committed to raising the American tariffs on farm products. He agreed to help American agencies enforce Prohibition by making it more difficult to smuggle Canadian liquor into the United States.
Hoover would not change his mind. The King government responded in the federal budget of by promising countervailing rates if the American government did increase its tariffs. By then the good times were over, though not all Canadians realized this at the time. In Canada the onset of the world-wide depression of the s differed by region and by industry. The Maritimes had already entered into severe economic decline. The overproduction of pulp and paper had meant lay-offs in northern communities as early as The price of western wheat dropped in In other regions, even in , there might be some concern for the future but the factories were still operating.
Richard Bedford Bennett , the leader of the opposition in parliament since , argued that there was a crisis and demanded that the government do something.
King was not impressed. It is revealing that there is no reference in his diary to the famous stock-market crash in October ; it would take two more years to push the government financially to the wall.
He also found the talk of unemployment exaggerated — in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics was only starting to register a drop — and surely next spring would bring higher prices and more jobs. It was, King believed, a temporary recession and just patience was needed. The prime minister spent the early part of mulling over the timing of the next election and related budgetary options.
On the economic front his optimism led to an uncharacteristic slip in a debate on unemployment on 3 April The Conservatives argued that the crisis was so severe that Ottawa should offer financial assistance to the provincial governments, which were responsible for unemployment relief.
King pointed out that no premier had asked for help and that, in Ontario, George Howard Ferguson had even denied his province had an unemployment problem. King was still confident that voters would appreciate his frugal financial policy. In the campaign he did not ignore the economic downturn but he offered caution and sound government as the appropriate response.
Returned in Prince Albert, King would spend the next five years in opposition. His lifestyle was now well established. At 55, he was a confirmed bachelor with few interests outside of politics. Laurier House, the Ottawa residence he had inherited from Lady Laurier and occupied since , was a comfortable, yellow-brick abode maintained by a staff that included a valet, a cook, a chauffeur, and a gardener.
An elevator was installed. It took King and sometimes his invited guests to the third-floor library, where a portrait of his mother was prominently displayed. King occasionally had people for dinner but these were usually formal occasions.
He was not a gregarious man and none of his colleagues and friends would visit him without an invitation.
Joan was a discreet and sympathetic woman who listened to King with patience and understanding and who rarely intruded her own problems into the discussions. King regularly talked to her over the telephone or dropped in for a visit to recount the difficulties or good fortunes of the day.
He expanded the property in the s and s and spent his summer months there to escape the sultry heat and social pressures of Ottawa. He rented a cottage on his property to the Pattesons and sometimes entertained foreign guests for lunch, but if he saw his colleagues or secretaries there it was only because he had asked them to make the trip to conduct business. If King seemed settled in his ways, he was still a lonely man and politics was not enough to fill his life completely.
He did continue to correspond with acquaintances outside Ottawa and to talk to Joan Patteson, but this was not enough for a man who constantly needed the reassurance that he was loved. Pat, his Irish terrier, was important because Pat showed affection without making too many demands on his time.
King, however, also found emotional support in more unusual ways. This faith in itself did not make King unique but the need for signs of approval from the spirit world gradually led him to seek confirmation in more eccentric ways. He was intrigued by forecasts of the future based on tea leaves and his horoscope, consulted a fortune-teller, and during his years in opposition, when he had more leisure time, tried to make contact with the spirit world through other means, including the Ouija board and sessions with a medium.
King occasionally expressed scepticism about the messages he received — he justified his interest by calling it psychic research — but he was still fascinated by the apparent contacts with the departed. He did not seek their political advice; his political decisions were based as always on his own analysis of situations.
The content of the messages was less important than the evidence that the spirits were present and watching over him. This reassurance gave him the strength to deal with the stresses and strains and with the isolation of politics.
In a paradoxical way, his eccentric links with this other world made it more possible for him to cope with the normal pressures of a political career. The normal pressures were intensified after the election by allegations of corruption.
What became known as the Beauharnois Scandal had its roots in a scheme to divert water from the St Lawrence into the Beauharnois Canal near Montreal to develop hydroelectric power.
In March the King government had authorized a diversion after confirming that it would not interfere with navigability on the river. It looked forward to a seaway with most of the St Lawrence diverted into its canal. The potential profits were enormous. The corporation, apparently concluding that it was necessary to keep the Liberals in power, funnelled more than half a million dollars into their campaign fund in This contribution proved awkward for the party when it became public knowledge after the Liberal defeat.
Between June and April committees of the commons and the Senate investigated the many related allegations. King managed to have his name cleared. The donation to the Liberal campaign was more difficult to deal with. King could argue that his government had protected the public interest when it allowed the diversion of water and had made no further commitments to the corporation, but he knew that many Canadians would remain unconvinced.
Liberal bagmen would continue to collect and distribute campaign funds. As leader, King would not be told who the contributors were, so his political decisions would not be affected by their identity. This solution left him with a clear conscience but it still left the party largely dependent on undisclosed donations from private corporations.
In the meantime Bennett had begun his administration actively, as he had promised. To solve the larger economic crisis, his response fell into the traditional pattern of a Canadian Conservative: he raised the tariff rates sharply on manufactured imports to encourage domestic production and create jobs. Unfortunately exports dwindled, the prices for Canadian goods continued to decline, and unemployment rose. By Bennett had shifted his hopes to the Imperial Economic Conference in Ottawa, where a number of trade agreements with Britain and other dominions were worked out.
An effective negotiator, he won some preferences, especially in the British market, without making major concessions. Though Bennett trumpeted his achievements and promised Canadians that economic recovery was on the way, the trade preferences unfortunately still left Canadians with unsold goods and deflated world prices.
Bennett, who initially acted as his own minister of finance, had to face declining revenues as well as ever stronger demands for federal aid. He raised taxes slightly but revenues declined with the economic slowdown. Further tariff increases would have little effect because the existing structure already excluded most foreign competition. He tried to keep aid to the provinces to a minimum by hard bargaining; in the unemployment and farm relief acts of —32 he even refused to disclose the amount of federal funds available in order to negotiate more effectively.
At the same time he showed his frustration with the depression by stressing law and order, denouncing strikes and demonstrations, and insisting that his administration was doing everything possible.
After King had dealt with the Beauharnois problems, he proved to be an effective opposition leader. The depression of the s was of unprecedented severity in Canada. The dependence on exports of raw materials and farm products meant that Canadian providers were especially vulnerable in a world where nations raised tariffs to protect their producers.
Western farmers were doubly unfortunate because not only did prices reach historic lows, but in many regions drought, rust, and grasshoppers also meant crop failures. In cities, factories closed because consumers could no longer buy.
Desperate Canadians had to turn to governments when they had no other place to turn, first for food and shelter and then for any means to restore their hope. The depression brought regions and classes into conflict and encouraged demagogues to propose radical and unorthodox policies.
King seemed an unlikely leader for this troubled time. He had earned a reputation for being cautious, a man of compromises and half measures. In a world where the battle seemed to be between left and right, with communism and fascism at the extremes, King looked indecisive, even colourless.
Yet within five years he would be back in office, at the head of the largest majority enjoyed by any party up to that time. He kept the Liberals together while the Conservative Party disintegrated and new political parties emerged to compete for votes. It was no mean achievement.
In —32, however, unity seemed a distant goal: the party was torn between high and low tariff factions, and on the front benches of opposition King had few strong supporters at his side. Like Bennett, King was slow to recognize that politics would be transformed by the depression. He had begun his years in opposition convinced that his administration had not deserved defeat. The recession, if it was a recession, could be blamed on the speculative excesses of businessmen and on the weather cycle.
The worst mistake Canada — and the rest of the world — could make was to react by raising tariffs and restricting international trade. Voters, King believed, would soon learn that they had been deceived and would come to appreciate the Liberal years of frugal administration and freer trade. King thus saw little need to reconsider or revise his political assumptions.
The Conservative government was clearly in political trouble and King was content to draw attention to its difficulties. He denounced the federal deficits as irresponsible without suggesting how budgets could be balanced.
He was still responding as a traditional Canadian Liberal, convinced that the depression would end only with the restoration of international trade, when Canadian producers would once more have markets.
Sure that high tariffs had made matters worse, he was encouraged too by the fact that Bennett and his government were being widely blamed and would surely be defeated.
It was enough to focus attention on trade and tariffs until voters had the opportunity to remedy their mistake. King, however, gradually realized that for many Canadians, including some long-time Liberals, waiting was not good enough.
Talk of tariffs had little relevance for parents who could not feed their children or for farmers who could not buy seed or hay. For them, the capitalist system seemed to have failed and tinkering with tariffs would accomplish nothing. It was also significant that voters would have more choice in the next election. The more radical Progressives and the Labour members in the commons had founded a new political party in — the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation — which offered the socialist alternative of government planning and public ownership.
That same year, in Alberta, evangelist William Aberhart became a convert to monetary reform in the shape of social credit, a doctrine that advocated the distribution of money for purchases by consumers. Within two years he had transformed it into a political platform.
By Social Credit candidates would come forward federally, and dissident Conservatives would form a new party. Many Liberals in the west, where the impact of the depression was most severe, were convinced that their party would have to adopt more radical measures to be relevant; more traditional Liberals rejected such policies as irresponsible.
He did not expect to convert the Tories, whom he believed were wedded to big business, or the socialists, who wanted a monopoly of power for the workers. Criticism from his own caucus members, however, he took seriously. He might regret their impatience but he would not ignore them. His role was to keep the party united. By he had reluctantly concluded that traditional Liberal preconceptions were not enough.
If the party was to survive, it would have to face the challenge of the depression more directly. Here his talents as a conciliator would be crucial. Although lower tariffs would be part of a new Liberal platform, the most controversial issue would be inflation. King and his more conservative followers still equated inflation with theft, but, for indebted producers especially, inflation seemed the only way to meet their financial obligations.
He succeeded because the moderates saw the bank as an agency that could protect sound money and the radicals saw it as an agency that could introduce a policy of controlled inflation. The significance of this compromise should not be minimized.
It recognized that the state should play a positive role in determining fiscal policy. It certainly implied more intervention than did the Bank of Canada legislated by Bennett in , which was to be an agency of the chartered banks. This new platform was quite satisfactory to King. It placed the party in the centre of the political spectrum, more open than the Conservatives to regulating business without resorting to the socialist panacea of government ownership.
It was also important to King that the platform had been approved in by both the conservatives and the radicals in the Liberal caucus. Some, among them Vincent Massey, wanted to take Liberalism in different directions, and not necessarily with King at the helm.
With party unity assured, King eagerly awaited the next election. Late in the session he denounced Bennett for holding on to office when he no longer had popular support and promised that if he insisted on meeting the house for a fifth session, the Liberals would obstruct and force an election.
In January the political situation changed when Bennett made five radio speeches known as the New Deal broadcasts. In the next session, he promised, he would introduce appropriate legislation. Confident that it had the jurisdictional authority, the government nonetheless passed the Employment and Social Insurance Act early in Bennett certainly won the attention of Canadians who, after five years of depression, wanted to believe that a political leader could end the crisis.
King quickly revised his strategy. There would be no obstruction when the House of Commons met. He persuaded his caucus that the New Deal broadcasts were not about reform but were really the first phase of the election campaign. The Liberals must not appear to be opposed to reform. It would be wiser to seem cooperative and encourage the government to introduce the promised laws immediately.
The embarrassed government had none prepared and when measures were introduced, they were less radical than the broadcasts had suggested.
The New Deal, however, did mean an expansion of the federal role in marketing farm products, regulating business, and supervising working conditions. In constitutional terms it meant federal intervention in assumed provincial jurisdictions. King avoided any direct challenges. He persuaded caucus that the party should express its constitutional reservations and then vote for the legislation.
The changed strategy worked. The Liberals remained united, at least in public, but the Conservatives became deeply divided. In the federal election of October the Liberals were returned with seats, the largest majority on record, with members from every province, while the Conservatives were reduced to a rump of 40 members.
The popular vote, however, told a different story. The Liberals received only 45 per cent, almost unchanged from the previous election. The dramatic change was the drop for the Conservatives and the support of 20 per cent for the new parties: the CCF and its socialism, Reconstruction and its emphasis on regulating business, and Social Credit and its panacea of inflation.
The next four years would be a difficult time for the country. For its new prime minister it would be a stern test of his political skills. His experience and confidence showed in his cabinet. King again took on external affairs. Ernest Lapointe, still his closest colleague, returned to justice. The cabinet was recognized as an able group, and King would give his ministers a good deal of autonomy in the administration of their departments, but King, more than ever, was in charge.
After some slow improvement in economic conditions, saw another downturn, especially on the prairies, where the summer was the driest on record. Regional grievances fed on the frustrations of deferred recovery, and the government again became a popular target. The divisions within the Liberal Party, which reflected regional rivalries, were compounded by a series of international crises that threatened to involve Canada in a European war.
The new government, as one of its first problems, had to decide on its international obligations as a member of the League of Nations. Shortly after the election, however, his government was faced with a request from the League to impose economic sanctions on Italy because it had invaded Ethiopia. The cabinet agreed to apply sanctions but the discussion made it clear to King that if the League went on to propose military intervention, the cabinet and the country would be deeply divided.
King nevertheless learned an important lesson: membership in the League might have serious political consequences for Canada. He took steps to minimize the risk.
Though he affirmed, in the commons and later in Geneva, his support for the League as a necessary institution for the resolution of disputes, he bluntly rejected the idea of the League as a military alliance against aggressors. Although he had shown a willingness to consider extending the role of government when party unity seemed to require it, he was still reluctant to take new initiatives. Bennett had already begun the discussions but political interests on both sides of the border had delayed matters.
In November , within two weeks of taking office, King was in Washington to make the best deal possible. He wisely enlisted the support of Cordell Hull, the American secretary of state and an evangelist for expanding international trade. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, however, was the key. King and Roosevelt found it easy to discuss their political concerns. Roosevelt had a talent for putting visiting heads of state at ease and King could talk knowledgeably about United States politics and politicians.
In the trade details King was well prepared and he returned to Canada with a treaty, which, modest in scope, gave Canadian farm products some welcome access to the American market.
He was also encouraged by a conference with the provincial premiers, in December shortly after the election. He was confident that a change in governing style would make a difference, that his emphasis on consultation would smooth relations. The premiers faced declining revenues and higher welfare costs and needed federal grants and loans to reduce their deficits. The national government had deficits of its own and hoped that provincial demands could be limited through the elimination of extravagances or duplications of welfare payments.
At the conference King pleased the premiers by increasing the federal grants until the spring of ; his talk of a federal commission to supervise welfare payments and the possibility of constitutional amendments affecting provincial jurisdiction over social policy did not attract much attention.
He was no more precise because he had no concrete measures in mind and assumed that any new distribution of powers would emerge from discussions with the provinces. King, however, soon found that confrontation was unavoidable because, without more federal aid, some provinces faced bankruptcy. In he could not refinance an issue of maturing provincial bonds without a federal guarantee of the interest payments.
When C. Dunning suggested some federal supervision of provincial finances in return, Aberhart refused and extended the term for the bonds while halving the interest rates. Then, in , under pressure from his backbenchers, he passed legislation to compel chartered banks to lend money to Albertans. King could claim to be standing up for civil rights in Alberta by defending the banks and the newspapers but he was less forthright in Quebec. Aberhart and Duplessis might show little respect for civil rights but the rift between the federal and provincial governments had a more basic cause.
The provinces, dependent as they were on revenues from direct taxes, could not provide even essential social services without subsidies or loans from Ottawa. When King refused to provide money for a bridge across the Fraser River, Pattullo was furious.
He objected to federal grants to western provinces to finance relief measures because most of the money came originally from Ontario taxpayers. If there was to be effective coordination, the onus would have to be on Ottawa. The public will soon discover who is protecting their interests and freedom. King was still not prepared to risk constitutional changes that might overextend federal finances. He focused instead on defending the fiscal stability of his government, convinced that a more efficient administration of relief by the provinces would reduce costs.
When the National Employment Commission, formed in , recommended a constitutional amendment to shift relief to the federal government, King remained dubious. The next year he postponed any decision on constitutional change by appointing a royal commission on dominion-provincial relations, known after its chairmen as the Rowell-Sirois commission.
His liberal views, which still associated government planning with socialist coercion, were reinforced by his concern to balance the budget. The prime minister did agree to some extension of the economic role of government when he felt the political pressures could not be safely ignored. By , however, the board had sold its holdings and King proposed a return to the open market. Western farmers were incensed. They wanted a board that would give them a guaranteed minimum price, with the federal government covering any losses, and they organized a public campaign that could not be ignored.
There was one other significant increase in federal expenditures that King agreed to with reluctance. They wanted to create jobs to stimulate the economy. Their argument was reinforced by the theory of influential British economist John Maynard Keynes that governments could increase employment by spending when private investment was low. King, however, was swayed more by political than by economic arguments.
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