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William Lyon Mackenzie King
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William Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was a Canadian lawyer, economist, university professor, civil servant, journalist, and politician. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921, to June 28, 1926; September 25, 1926, to August 6, 1930; and October 23, 1935, to November 15, 1948. With over 21 years in the office, he was the longest serving Prime Minister in British Commonwealth history.
He is commonly known either by his full name or as Mackenzie King.
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William Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was a Canadian lawyer, economist, university professor, civil servant, journalist, and politician. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921, to June 28, 1926; September 25, 1926, to August 6, 1930; and October 23, 1935, to November 15, 1948. With over 21 years in the office, he was the longest serving Prime Minister in British Commonwealth history.
He is commonly known either by his full name or as Mackenzie King. Mackenzie was one of his given names, not part of his surname, but he was never publicly referred to as simply "William King." Friends and family called him by his nickname, "Rex."
- For a visual chronology of King's life, please see Life of William Lyon Mackenzie King at Wikimedia Commons.
Early life
King was born in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener) to John King and Isabel Grace Mackenzie. His grandfather was William Lyon Mackenzie, first mayor of Toronto and leader of the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837. His father was a lawyer, later a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, and the family lived comfortably. King had three siblings: older sister Isabel "Bella" Christina Grace (1873–1915), younger sister Janet "Jennie" Lindsey (1876–1962), and younger brother Dougall Macdougall "Max" (1878–1922). King attended Berlin Central School (now Suddaby Public School) and Berlin High School (now Kitchener-Waterloo Collegiate and Vocational School).
University
King eventually earned five university degrees. He obtained degrees from the University of Toronto and Osgoode Hall Law School : B.A. 1895, LL.B. 1896 (Osgoode) and M.A. 1897. While attending the University of Toronto and Osgoode, he met nine of his cabinet ministers during his time as prime minister, all of whom, including him, were members of the Kappa Alpha Society. While at the University of Toronto, King also met Arthur Meighen, a future political rival; the two men did not get on especially well from the start. After studying at the University of Chicago, Mackenzie King proceeded to Harvard University, receiving an M.A. in political economy 1898. In 1909 his request to receive a Ph.D. for a dissertation he had written nine years earlier, called "Sweating Systems and the Clothing Trade in the United States, England, and Germany," was granted. He was the second Canadian Prime Minister to have earned a doctorate; Sir John Abbott was the first. King also taught economics at Harvard.
Civil servant, Minister of Labour
King worked as a newspaper reporter for the Toronto Globe while studying at the University of Toronto. In 1900, he became Canada's first Deputy Minister of Labour.
In 1901, King's roommate, Henry Albert Harper, died heroically during a skating party thrown by the earl of Minto, Governor General of Canada. At the party, the young daughter of Andrew George Blair, Minister of Railways and Canals, fell through the ice of the frozen Ottawa River. Harper dove into the water to save the child, and perished trying to rescue her. King led the effort to raise a memorial to Harper, which resulted in the erection of the Sir Galahad statue on Parliament Hill in 1905. In 1906, King published a memoir of Harper, entitled The Secret of Heroism.
He was first elected to Parliament as a Liberal in a 1908 by-election, and was re-elected by acclamation in a 1909 by-election following his appointment as the first-ever Minister of Labour.
King's term as Minister of Labour was marked by two significant achievements. He led the passage of the Industrial Disputes Investigation Act and the Combines Investigation Act, which he had erected during his civil and parliamentary service. The legislation significantly improved the financial situation for millions of Canadian workers. He lost his seat in the 1911 general election, which saw the Conservatives defeat his Liberals.
Industrial consultant, author
Following his party's defeat, he went to the United States to work for the Rockefeller family's Foundation at their invitation, heading their new Department of Industrial Research. The post offered a substantial salary. He formed a close working association and friendship with the family leader, John D. Rockefeller Jr., advising him through the turbulent period of the 1914 strike and Ludlow massacre at a family-owned coal company in Colorado, which subsequently set the stage for a new era in labor management in America.
King faced criticism from certain quarters during World War I for not serving in Canada's military (instead working for the Rockefellers), but he was 40 years old when the war began, was not in good physical condition, never gave up his Ottawa home, and travelled to the United States on an as-needed basis, performing valuable service by helping to keep war-related industries running smoothly.
He returned to Canada to run in the 1917 election, which focused almost entirely on the conscription issue, and lost again, due to his opposition to conscription, which was supported by the majority of English Canadians.
In 1918 King, assisted by his friend F.A. McGregor, published the far-sighted book , which, although it was not received with fanfare at the time, laid out the course for the next 30 years of King's political aims, which were largely realized during that time. The book has been called the most important written by a Canadian statesman.
Liberal Leader
In 1919, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Liberal party leader, died, and the first Liberal leadership convention was held. King entered the contest, and won over a field of four rivals, on the fourth ballot. He soon returned to parliament in a by-election. King remained leader until 1948.
Prime Minister
In the 1921 election, his party defeated Arthur Meighen and the Conservatives, and he became Prime Minister. King's Liberals had only a minority position, however, since they won 115 out of 233 seats; the Conservatives won 50, the newly-formed Progressive Party won 65 (but declined to form the official Opposition), and there were three Independents. This was the first minority government in Canadian history.
First term
Despite prolonged negotiations, King was unable to attract the Progressives into his government, but once Parliament opened, he relied on their support to defeat non-confidence motions from the Conservatives. King was also opposed in many policies by the Progressives, which did not support trade tariffs. King faced a delicate balancing act of reducing tariffs enough to please the prairie-based Progressives, which were largely a farmer-based group, but not too much to alienate his vital support in Ontario and Quebec, the heart of Canadian manufacturing industries. King and Meighen sparred constantly and bitterly in Commons debates.
As King's term wore on, the Progressives gradually weakened. Their effective and passionate leader, Thomas Crerar, resigned to return to his grain business, and was replaced by the more placid Robert Forke. The socialist reformer J.S. Woodsworth gradually gained influence and power, and King was able to reach an accommodation with him on policy matters, since the two shared many common ideas and plans.
Second term
King called an election in 1925, in which the Conservatives won the most seats, but not a majority in the House of Commons. King held on to power with the support of the Progressives. Soon into his term, however, a bribery scandal in the Department of Customs was revealed, which led to more support for the Conservatives and Progressives, and the possibility that King would be forced to resign. King asked Governor General Lord Byng to dissolve Parliament and call another election, but Byng refused, the only time in Canadian history that the Governor General has exercised such a power. King resigned, and Byng asked Meighen to form a new government. When Meighen's government was defeated in the House of Commons a short time later, however, Byng called a new election in 1926, in which King's Liberals won a de facto majority government with the support of Liberal-Progressive MPs.
Third term
In his third term, King introduced old-age pensions. In February 1930, he appointed Cairine Wilson, whom he knew personally, as the first female senator in Canadian history. His government was in power during the beginning of the Great Depression, but lost the election of 1930 to the Conservative Party, led by Richard Bedford Bennett. King stayed on as Opposition Leader.
Fourth term
King's Liberals were returned to power once more in the 1935 election. The worst of the Depression had passed, and King implemented relief programs such as the National Housing Act and National Employment Commission. His government also created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1936, Trans-Canada Airlines (the precursor to Air Canada) in 1937, and the National Film Board of Canada in 1939. In 1938, he changed the Bank of Canada from a private company to a crown corporation.
In March 1936, in response to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, Mackenzie King had the Canadian High Commissioner in London inform the British government that if Britain went to war with Germany over the Rhineland issue that Canada would remain neutral. In June 1937 during an Imperial Conference of all the Dominion Prime Ministers in London convened during the coronation of King George VI, Mackenzie King informed the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain that Canada would only go to war if Britain were directly attacked, and if Britain were to become involved in a continental war then Chamberlain was not to expect Canadian support. Also during 1937 King visited Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, becoming the first and only North American head of government to meet with Hitler. King commented in his journal that "he is really one who truly loves his fellow-men, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good". He forecast that "the world will yet come to see a very great man - mystic in Hitler. [...] I cannot abide in Nazism -- the regimentation -- cruelty -- oppression of Jews -- attitude towards religion, etc., but Hitler, him -- the peasant -- will rank some day with Joan of Arc among the deliverers of his people."
During the same visit to Berlin, King met with the German Foreign Minister Baron Konstantin von Neurath on June 30, 1937. Neurath told Mackenzie King that: “He [Neurath] said to me that I would have loathed living in Berlin with the Jews, and the way in which they had increased their numbers in the city ... He said there was no pleasure in going to a theatre which was filled with them .... They were getting control of all the business, the finance .... It was necessary to get them out to have the German people really control their own City and affairs."
King suggested to Neurath that everyone should try to overcome prejudices and promote goodwill and Neurath agreed. Following a visit to his house for lunch, King noted that he found Neurath "very kind and pleasant".
In 1938, during the great crisis in Central Europe over Czechoslovakia that would culminate in the Munich Agreement, Mackenzie King again had the Canadian High Commissioner tell the British that if war broke out over Czechoslovakia, Canada would remain neutral. Mackenzie King was privately highly critical of the diplomacy of Neville Chamberlain which he felt was involving Britain, and hence potentially the entire Commonwealth over a issue that was of no concern to the Commonwealth.
Ethnic policies
While Minister of Labour, King was appointed to investigate the causes of and claims for compensation resulting from the 1907 Asiatic Exclusion League riots in Vancouver's Chinatown and Japantown. One of the claims for damages came from Chinese opium manufacturers, which led King to investigate narcotics use in Vancouver. King became alarmed upon hearing that white women were also opium users, not just Chinese men, and he then initiated the process that led to the first legislation outlawing narcotics in Canada.
Under King's administration the Canadian government was consistent with other governments, in limiting Jewish immigration in the face of first increasing savage anti-Semitic persecution, followed by the Holocaust in the German dominated areas of Europe. In June 1939 Canada along with Cuba, and the United States, refused to allow the 900 Jewish refugees aboard the passenger ship M.S. St. Louis refuge There was an outcry in the press, leading one historian to quip that King "had a weather vane where most people had a heart."
Fifth term, Second World War
King realized the necessity of World War II before Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, and actually began mobilizing on August 25, 1939, with full mobilization on September 1. Unlike World War I, however, when Canada was automatically at war as soon as Britain joined, King asserted Canadian autonomy by waiting until September 10, a full week after Britain's declaration, when a vote in the House of Commons took place, to support the government's decision to declare war. During this time Canada was able to acquire weapons from the United States. Upon declaring war Canada would not be able to purchase weapons from the US, under the US policy then in force of not arming belligerents. This issue soon became a moot point as the American embargo was revoked in November 1939.
King's government greatly expanded the role of the National Research Council of Canada during the war, moving into full-scale research of nuclear physics, nuclear engineering, and commercial use of nuclear power in the following years. King, with C.D. Howe acting as point man, approved the move of the nuclear group from Montreal to Chalk River, Ontario in 1944, with the establishment of Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories and the residential town of Deep River, Ontario. Canada became a world leader in this field, with the NRX reactor becoming operational in 1947; at the time, NRX was the only operational nuclear reactor outside the United States.
King's promise not to impose conscription contributed to the defeat of Maurice Duplessis's Union Nationale Quebec provincial government in 1939 and Liberals' re-election in the 1940 election. But after the fall of France in 1940, Canada introduced conscription for home service. Still, only volunteers were to be sent overseas. King wanted to avoid a repeat of the Conscription Crisis of 1917. By 1942, the military was pressing King hard to send conscripts to Europe. In 1942, King held a national plebiscite on the issue asking the nation to relieve him of the commitment he had made during the election campaign. He said that his policy was "conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription."
French Canadians voted overwhelmingly against conscription, but a majority of English Canadians supported it. French and English conscripts were sent to fight in the Aleutian Islands in 1943 - technically North American soil and therefore not "overseas" - but the mix of Canadian volunteers and draftees found the Japanese had fled before their arrival. Otherwise, King continued with a campaign to recruit volunteers, hoping to address the problem with the shortage of troops caused by heavy losses in the Dieppe Raid in 1942, in Italy in 1943, and after the Battle of Normandy in 1944. In November 1944, the Government decided it was necessary to send conscripts to Europe. This led to a brief political crisis (see Conscription Crisis of 1944) and a mutiny by conscripts posted in British Columbia, but the war ended a few months later. Over 15,000 conscripts went to Europe, though only a few hundred saw combat.
King was extremely unpopular among Canadian servicemen and women during the war, who were generally pro-conscription. His appearances at Canadian Army installations in Britain (and, after June 6, 1944, in continental Europe) were invariably greeted with boos and catcalls. When he was defeated after the war in his Prince Albert riding, the servicemen's vote was considered instrumental, and a sign was placed outside the town, similar to those that had been erected in The Netherlands, reading, "This Town Liberated by the Canadian Army".
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, King’s government oversaw the Japanese-Canadian internment on Canada’s west coast, which gave 22,000 BC residents 24 hours to pack. This was done even though the RCMP and Canadian military had told the Government that most Japanese citizens were law-abiding and not a threat. Major General Ken Stuart even wrote to Ottawa to say "I cannot see that the Japanese Canadians constitute the slightest menace to national security." The federal government confiscated and sold the property and belongings of the incarcerated Japanese at public auction. After the war, King offered Japanese-Canadians the option of “repatriation" to a war-ravaged Japan, even though many had never been there and did not speak the language; they were not allowed back to coastal areas until his government fell several years later.
Canadian autonomy
Throughout his tenure, King led Canada from a colony with responsible government to an autonomous nation within the British Commonwealth. During the Chanak Crisis of 1922, King refused to support the British without first consulting Parliament, while the Conservative leader, Arthur Meighen, supported Britain. The British were disappointed with King's response, but the crisis was soon resolved, as King had anticipated. After the King-Byng Affair, King went to the Imperial Conference of 1926 and argued for greater autonomy of the Dominions. This resulted in the Balfour Declaration 1926, which announced the equal status of all members of the British Commonwealth (as it was known then), including Britain. This eventually led to the Statute of Westminster 1931. The Canadian city of Hamilton hosted the first Empire Games in 1930; this competition later became known as the Commonwealth Games.
In the lead up to World War II in 1939, King affirmed Canadian autonomy by saying that the Canadian Parliament would make the final decision on the issue of going to war. He reassured the pro-British Canadians that Parliament would surely decide that Canada would be at Britain's side if Great Britain was drawn into a major war. At the same time, he reassured those who were suspicious of British influence in Canada by promising that Canada would not participate in British colonial wars. His Quebec lieutenant, Ernest Lapointe, promised French-Canadians that the government would not introduce conscription; individual participation would be voluntary. In 1939, in a country which had seemed deeply divided, these promises made it possible for Parliament to agree almost unanimously to declare war. King played two roles. On the one hand, he told English Canadians that Canada would no doubt enter war if Britain did. On the other hand, he and his Quebec lieutenant Ernest Lapointe told French Canadians that Canada would only go to war if it was in the country's best interests. With the dual messages, King slowly led Canada toward war without causing strife between Canada's two main linguistic communities. As his final step in asserting Canada's autonomy, King ensured that the Canadian Parliament made its own declaration of war one week after Britain.
King's government introduced the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1946, which officially created the notion of "Canadian citizens". Prior to this, Canadians were considered British subjects living in Canada. On January 3, 1947, King received Canadian citizenship certificate number 0001.
Post-war Canada, sixth term
Mackenzie King was not charismatic and did not have a large personal following. Only 8 Canadians in 100 picked him when the Canadian Gallup (CIPO) poll asked in September, 1946, "What person living in any part of the world today do you admire?" Nevertheless, his Liberal Party was re-elected in the election of 1945. King had been considered a minor player in the war by both United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. King did act as a link between the two countries between September 1939 and December 1941, but after the U.S. entered the war his position was largely redundant. King's most important contribution to wartime diplomacy was his crafting of a plan in June 1940 to host a British government in exile and to aid in the transfer of the British fleet to Canadian ports. He also hosted a major conference in Quebec City in 1943, which was attended by both Roosevelt and Churchill.
King helped found the United Nations in 1945. Both he and Lester Pearson, who was Canada's ambassador to the United States at the time, travelled to the opening meetings in San Francisco. King, unlike Pearson, wound up pessimistic about the organization's future possibilities, and left most of the Canadian work to Pearson.
After the war, King quickly dismantled wartime controls. Unlike World War I, press censorship ended with the hostilities. He began an ambitious program of social programs and laid the groundwork for Newfoundland and Labrador's entry into Canada. King also had to deal with the deepening Cold War and the fallout from espionage revelations of Russian cipher clerk Igor Gouzenko, who defected in Ottawa in 1945. Justice Minister Louis St. Laurent dealt decisively with this crisis; St. Laurent's leadership deepened King's respect, and helped make St. Laurent the next Canadian prime minister three years later.
In 1948, he retired after 22 years as prime minister, and was succeeded as Liberal Party leader, and Prime Minister of Canada, by his Justice Minister, Louis St. Laurent. King also had the most number of terms (six) as Prime Minister. Sir John A. Macdonald was second-in-line, with 19 years, as the longest-serving Prime Minister in Canadian History (1867–1873, 1878–1891).
Personal life
Much of the information on King's personal life can be sourced to the diaries he kept from 1893 until his death in 1950. One biographer has collectively described these diaries as "the most important single political document in twentieth-century Canadian history," as, in addition to the unique insight on King's private life they provide, the directions and motivations of the Canadian war efforts and other events are described in detail.
Mackenzie King was a cautious politician who tailored his policies to prevailing opinions. "Parliament will decide," he liked to say when pressed to act.
Privately, he was highly eccentric with his preference for communing with spirits, including those of Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, his dead mother, and several of his Irish Terrier dogs, all named Pat. He also claimed to commune with the spirit of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, American president and close friend. He sought personal reassurance from the spirit world, rather than seeking political advice. Indeed, after his death, one of his mediums said that she had not realized that he was a politician. King asked whether his party would win the 1935 election, one of the few times politics came up during his seances. His occult interests were not widely known during his years in office, and only became publicized later, and have seen in his occult activities a penchant for forging unities from antitheses, thus having latent political import. In 1953 Time Magazine stated that he owned and used both a Ouija board and a crystal ball. In the 1970s biographers used the extensive diaries he kept during most of his life to delve deeper into his occult activities. One person he held seances with was Canadian Artist Homer Watson.
King never married, but had several close female friends, including Joan Patteson, a married woman with whom he spent some of his leisure time.
Some historians have interpreted passages in his diaries as suggesting that King regularly had sexual relations with prostitutes. Others, also basing their claims on passages of his diaries, have suggested that King was in love with Lord Tweedsmuir, whom he had chosen for appointment as Governor General in 1935.
Death
Mackenzie King died on July 22, 1950, at Kingsmere from pneumonia, with his retirement plans to write his memoirs unfulfilled. He is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. Unmarried, King is survived by relative Margery King.
Legacy
His likeness is on the Canadian fifty-dollar bill.
Following the publication of King's diaries in the 1970s, several fictional works about him were published by Canadian writers. These included Elizabeth Gourlay's novel Isabel, Allan Stratton's play Rexy and Heather Robertson's trilogy Willie: A Romance (1983), Lily: A Rhapsody in Red (1986) and Igor: A Novel of Intrigue (1989).
In 1998, there was controversy over King's exclusion from a memorial to the Quebec Conference of 1943, which was attended by King, Roosevelt, and Churchill. The monument was built by the sovereigntist Parti Québécois government of Quebec, which justified the decision on the basis that King was not important enough. Canadian federalists, however, accused the government of Quebec of trying to advance their own political agenda.
Mackenzie King was not charismatic or media-savvy and did not have a large personal following. It is often suggested that he would not have held power as long as he did, or even at all, during the age of television which was ushered in not long after his retirement.
King left no published political memoirs, although his aforementioned private diaries were extensively detailed. His main published work remains his 1918 book Industry and Humanity.
Part of his country retreat, now called Mackenzie King Estate, at Kingsmere in the Gatineau Park, near Ottawa, is open to the public. The house King died in, called "The Farm", is the official residence of the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons and is not part of the park.
The Woodside National Historic Site in Kitchener, Ontario was the cherished boyhood home of William Lyon Mackenzie King. The estate has over 4.65 hectares of garden and parkland for exploring and relaxing, and the house has been restored to reflect life during King's era.
King was mentioned in the book Alligator Pie by Dennis Lee as the subject of a nonsensical children's poem.
Supreme Court appointments
King chose the following jurists to be appointed as justices of the Supreme Court of Canada by the Governor General:
- Arthur Cyrille Albert Malouin (January 30, 1924 – October 1, 1924)
- Francis Alexander Anglin (as Chief Justice, September 16, 1924 – February 28, 1933; appointed a Puisne Justice under Prime Minister Laurier, February 23, 1909)
- Edmund Leslie Newcombe (September 16, 1924 – December 9, 1931)
- Thibaudeau Rinfret (October 1, 1924 – June 22, 1954; appointed as Chief Justice January 8, 1944)
- John Henderson Lamont (April 2, 1927 – March 10, 1936)
- Robert Smith (May 18, 1927 – December 7, 1933)
- Lawrence Arthur Dumoulin Cannon (January 14, 1930 – December 25, 1939)
- Albert Blellock Hudson (March 24, 1936 – January 6, 1947)
- Robert Taschereau (February 9, 1940 – September 1, 1967)
- Ivan Rand (April 22, 1943 – April 27, 1959)
- Roy Lindsay Kellock (October 3, 1944 – January 15, 1958)
- James Wilfred Estey (October 6, 1944 – January 22, 1956)
- Charles Holland Locke (June 3, 1947 – September 16, 1962)
Secondary sources
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- Granatstein, J. L. Canada's War: The politics of the Mackenzie King government, 1939-1945 (1975)
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- Stacey, C. P. Arms, Men and Governments: The War Policies of Canada, 1939-1945 (1970)
- Stacey, C. P. Canada and the Age of Conflict: Volume 2: 1921-1948; the Mackenzie King Era, University of Toronto Press 1981, ISBN 0-0820-2397-5.
Popular books
- Bliss, Michael. Right Honourable Men: The Descent of Canadian Politics from Macdonald to Mulroney (1994), pp. 123-184.
- Bowering, George. Egotists and Autocrats: the Prime Ministers of Canada, 1999.
- Donaldson, Gordon. The Prime Ministers of Canada, 1997.
- Ferguson, Will. Bastards and Boneheads: Canada's Glorious Leaders, Past and Present, 1999.
- Hutchison, Bruce. The Incredible Canadian. 1952.
- Hutchison, Bruce. Mr. Prime Minister 1867-1964. 1964.
Television series
Primary sources
- Industry and Humanity, by William Lyon Mackenzie King and F.J. McGregor, 1918.
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- reports many CIPO polls from Canadian Institute of Public Opinion.
External links
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