Remembering William Lyon Mackenzie King

 

With Trump back in Washington, Canadians today face threats to our national sovereignty which we have not seen in well over eight decades.  Former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, a Liberal, guided us through the difficult terrain of much of the Great Depression and the Second World War.  He is the longest serving prime minister of Canada, and he bears comparison with the shortest serving prime minister to date we have ever had: Mark Carney, also a Liberal. 

In addition to being trained as a lawyer, King had a doctorate in Political Economy from Harvard.  Carney, a Commonwealth Scholar, has a doctorate in Economics from Oxford.  These two individuals are the only Canadians who served as prime minister to have a doctorate – Pierre Trudeau’s doctoral studies at the London School of Economic were never completed.  Carney’s experiences at the Bank of Canada (handling the Great Recession of 2007-8) and at the Bank of England (handling Brexit) can, in some ways, compare with the weight of the disruptive threats facing the world in the 1930’s and the 1940’s. 

Certainly today’s political landscape, when looking at Trump and across many parts of the globe, resembles the authoritarian path taken by Europe - not just Germany - in the 1930’s.[1]  On top of that, Trump’s tariffs can be seen as a new iteration of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, imposed by the USA in 1930, which promoted economic protectionism and further precipitated the depths of the Great Depression.

So, as Mark Carney seems to have risen to today’s occasion, let us not forget Mackenzie King who dominated Canadian politics under similar circumstances.  Here is a poetic reminder of Mackenzie King’s political skills:

W.L.M.K.

How shall we speak of Canada,
Mackenzie King dead?
The Mother’s boy in the lonely room
With his dog, his medium and his ruins?

He blunted us.

We had no shape
Because he never took sides,
And no sides
Because he never allowed them to take shape.

He skillfully avoided what was wrong
Without saying what was right,
And never let his on the one hand
Know what his on the other hand was doing.

The height of ambition
Was to pile a Parliamentary Committee on a Royal Commission
To have “conscription if necessary
But not necessarily conscription”,
To let Parliament decide –
Later.

Postpone, postpone, abstain.

Only one thread was certain:
After World War I
Business as usual,
After World War II
Orderly decontrol.
Always he led us back to where we were before.

He seemed to be in the centre
Because we had no centre,
No vision
To pierce the smoke-screen of his politics.

Truly he will be remembered
Whenever men honour ingenuity,
Ambiguity, inactivity, and potential longevity.

Let us raise up a temple
To the cult of mediocrity,
Do nothing by halves
Which can be done by quarters. [2]     

                                 F.R. Scott

                              

 

 

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[1] See David Clay Large, Between Two Fires: Europe’s Path in the 1930’s (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990).

[2] F.R. Scott and A.J.M. Smith, The Blasted Pine: An Anthology of Satire, Invective and Disrespectful Verse, Chiefly by Canadian Writers (Toronto: MacMillan, 1962), pp. 27,28.