This second volume of the official biography of Mackenzie King (the first, written by R. MacG. Dawson, was published in 1958) covers the years 1924 to 1932. At the opening of this period, King was still an inexperienced and untried leader but the next few years were to test his qualities as he dealt with the concessions and compromises necessary in governing with an unstable majority and finally emerged the winner from the complicated chess games of parliamentary sessions. The Liberal success in the election of 1926 returned to office a Prime Minister with confidence in his own judgment and more inclined to hold firm to his own opinions against opposition from his colleagues or his party. After this election and the outcome of that in 1930, which handed over to the Conservatives the problems of the depression, the myth of King's political infallibility continued to grow. But a less able man would have been less lucky. As this book shows, King was a consummate party leader, with an unusual sensitivity to political danger and an unusual capacity to learn from his mistakes. In the years 1924 to 1932 a number of familiar Canadian issues had to be dealt with: freight rates on land and sea, the debate between a tariff for protection, the problems of the Maritime Provinces, the natural resources of the Prairie Provinces, old age pensions, the St. Lawrence Waterway, immigration. There were also other more striking incidents, which the author chronicles with verve and style: the customs scandal of 1926, the heady pleasures of the years of prosperity and the dismal frustrations of the years of depression, the election of 1930, the Beauharnois sensation. Throughout skilful use is made of the public records of these years, of the King papers, and the copious pages of King's own daily diary of his political problems, his conversations with colleagues and diplomats, his worries and frustrations over difficult decisions, his own aims and ideals. Over these years King developed and strengthened his convictions about the over-riding concern of all Canadian political leaders, national unity. Only a proper estimate of what was desirable, what was necessary, and what was impossible could guide in the working out of policies that would be tolerable by the whole of Canada, and it was, of course, King's firm belief and the guiding principle of his political life that the cause of national unity was best served by the cause of Liberalism, since that party above all represented the major sections or groups in Canada and alone could effect a satisfactory compromise among them. This book, brilliant and effective in conception and execution, is a study of political leadership in a divided nation, a nation which even in calmer times is proverbially difficult to govern. It is also a revealing and convincing study of a complex man whose drab public image concealed unsuspected eccentricities.

This second volume of the official biography of Mackenzie King (the first, written by R. MacG. Dawson, was published in 1958) covers the years 1924 to 1932. As this book shows, King was a consummate party leader, with an unusual sensitivity to political danger and an unusual capacity to learn from his mistakes.

This comprehensive bibliography on William Lyon Mackenzie King, the most prominent Canadian politician in the first half of the twentieth century, will be an invaluable reference tool for researchers in archives and libraries, as well as for political scientists, historians, journalists, and book collectors. In this volume Henderson provides comprehensive lists of books, articles, and other material written by King or about him and his era, and includes a series of appendices relating to studies on King and miscellaneous material pertaining to his life and career. In addition, Henderson provides a list of unsigned articles by King that appeared in newspapers and periodicals, and of sound recordings and motion picture footage relating to him. Finally, he identifies all forewords and prefaces written by King, plays written about him, and books and poems dedicated to him.

Aided by meticulous knowledge of the former Prime Minister's diary, and with characteristic conciseness and clarity, H. Blair Neatby has written the impressive and long-awaited third volume of the official biography of Mackenzie King. He carefully and judiciously untangles a complexity of issues in Canadian political history to produce definitive accounts of controversies that have engaged the attention of Canadian historians for years. Beginning the story in 1932, this volume treats the depression years when King was first in Opposition and then the years after 1935 when he was once again Prime Minister; it is a masterly analysis of how one of the most enigmatic figures in Canadian history made shrewd and critical political decisions. Attention is paid in turn to his clearly successful tactics as Leader of the Opposition; the election campaign of 1935; a wide range of his domestic policies, including those on unemployment, inflation, relief, and trade; and to a series of international crises – the Ethiopian crisis, the Spanish Civil War, Anschluss, and Munich – that culminated in the Second World War. At all times, King's overriding concern was to preserve national unity at home and to avoid commitments abroad, either through the British Commonwealth or the League of Nations. We see King in his relations with other Canadian leaders – Aberhart, Pattullo, Hepburn, Duplessis, and Bennett – and with world leaders – Roosevelt, Baldwin, Chamberlain, and Hitler. We also see the personal side of the man, and the link between the private and the public figure. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Volume III is an accomplished piece of historical writing; progressing in a controlled way through a profusion of incident and accident, it brings to completion the outstanding biography of a consummate politician.

This book provides the first full account of a major social and political movement of the interwar years in Canada: the campaign for "Maritime Rights" which erupted in the Atlantic provinces after World War I. Ernest R. Forbes traces the history of the movement from its origins in the decline in relative status and influence of the Maritimes that accompanied the rise of the West and the growing dominance of the Central Canadian metropolises. Maritimers saw their political influence reduced, the underpinnings of their economy - especially in the critical areas of tariffs, freight rates, and subsidies - whittled away, and Canada defined in terms that seemed to exclude them. Adopting a strategy characteristic of the progressive movements of the period, they attempted through organization and agitation to restore their position. Farmers, fishermen, manufacturers, and organized labour articulated their demands through the provincial press, boards of trade, union locals, educational conferences, and mass delegations to Ottawa. Professor Forbes challenges traditional assumptions in his emphasis upon a vigorous Maritime progressivism that transcended party affiliations. All the political parties tried to use the protest movement, but none had created it, nor had it a specific founder or leader. The agitiation was in fact a spontaneous expression of the economic and social frustrations of the Maritime people. Although their efforts were largely defeated by the conflicting interests of stronger regions, and by the King government's adoitness in defusing protest through a policy of study and delay, the author believes that the aroused Maritimers had succeeded in establishing their difficulties in the public's mind as a national problem.

Revised thesis comprising a case study of the old age benefit programme in Canada, to illustrate the political aspects and social policy decision making processes of income redistribution - includes references and statistical tables.

Commissions High is an account of the work of the Canadian High Commission from 1870 until Britain's entry into the European Common Market one hundred years later. Roy MacLaren argues that, until the defeat of Diefenbaker in 1963, there was tension between the forces of imperial (later Commonwealth) solidarity and those of localized nationalism. Commissions High explores how localized nationalism led Canadian politicians to resist British efforts to centralize imperial decision-making and shows how the weakening of Commonwealth and transatlantic bonds following World War II contributed to Britain's focus on Europe and to the increasing domination of Canada by the United States.