Published by The Royal Bank of Canada

Laurier: The Only Man

Wilfrid Laurier gave his body and soulto the reconciliation of Canadians, buthis life seemed to end in failure. Onlynow can we measure his greatness, andgive thanks that he lived in our midst...

[] The Old Chief was dead. "The place of Sir JohnMacdonald in this country was so large and soabsorbing that it is almost impossible to conceivethat the political life of this country -- the fate ofthis country--could continue without him,"Opposition Leader Wilfrid Laurier told a grievingHouse of Commons. On that June day in 1891, noone could have foreseen that the Liberal Laurierwould go down in history as the true successor tothe Conservative Macdonald.

Schoolchildren today learn of Macdonald andLaurier almost in the same breath, as if one hadpassed on the task of building a nation to theother. Time has blurred the differences in policyand approach between them, and the five-yearextension of Tory rule after Macdonald’s deathfigures only as a brief interlude in which the highhopes held for Confederation were cruelly dashed.

We can see in historical hindsight that Laurierwas the only man present capable of holding thenation-in-the-making together almost in defianceof its own nature. Those with no belief in destinymay be given pause by the confluence of circum-stances that gave Canada, more or less in a row,two leaders uniquely qualified to meet the crucialchallenges of their times.

It has been said that nations get the leadershipthey deserve, but the all-male electorate of thefractious collection of former British colonies thatmade up Canada in the 1890s could not be said tohave deserved a Laurier. He was everything mostof them were not: tolerant while they were bigoted,

cosmopolitan while they were parochial, concilia-tory while they were confrontationist.

There was always something romantic andpoetic about Laurier, qualities which he hardlyshared with the majority of his rough-hewn con-temporary countrymen. And indeed his careerstarted out romantically enough as a fiery radicallawyer fresh out of the McGill Law School inMontreal. Born in 1841 in the Laurentian villageof St.-Lin, he had been educated in both Frenchand English. His first venture into public affairswas to join the Rouges, a libertarian movementwhich fed on mystical memories of the 1837Papineau rebellion.

When, in the mid-1860s, the authoritarianRoman Catholic hierarchy in Quebec clashed withthe Rouges on a question of intellectual freedom,Laurier was among the first to take to the politi-cal barricades. He addressed anti-clerical rallies,winning a reputation as a thrilling orator.

But, to complete the picture of the romanticGallic poet, he was suspected of having tuber-culosis. He repaired to the salubrious mountainair of the Eastern Townships. His Rouge col-leagues gave him the job of editing their news-paper from there.

By that time they had taken up a new cause-opposing the federation of the present MaritimeProvinces, Ontario and Quebec which was beingnegotiated. Towards the end of the anti-Confed-eration campaign, Laurier wrote an editorialcontaining a grim prediction: "From this moment

there will be strife, division, war, anarchy; theweakest element, that is to say the French andCatholic element, will be dragged along andswallowed up by the strongest."

Laurier was to spend most of the rest of his daystrying to prevent his own dire prophecy fromcoming true. At first, however, he greeted thecoming of Confederation with apathetic resigna-tion. He was then placidly practising law in thepretty Eastern Townships centre of Arthabaska.In 1868 he married a pretty dark-eyed Montrealmusic teacher named Zoe Lafontaine.

But his genius for politics could not be deniedfor long. In 1871 the Rouges persuaded him to runsuccessfully for a seat in the Quebec Legislature.Three years later he came to Ottawa as a LiberalMember of Parliament.

He persuaded Quebecers thatvoting Liberal was not a sin

By then his fear that French-Canadians in-terests would be sunk in the sea of the English-speaking majority seemed rapidly on its way torealization. That was what had driven him intofederal politics. His English-Canadian parliamen-tary colleagues did not share his view of Confed-eration as a pact between the two language groups;on the contrary, many of them saw it as a stickwith which to beat the French culture in Canadaout of existence. The place to protect Frenchinterests was at the seat of federal power.

But Laurier was aware that any power he mightpersonally exert on behalf of his people wouldhave to emanate from his home province. Hetherefore set about building a solid base for theLiberal Party in a Quebec dominated by the Con-servative Bleus with the active support of theCatholic Church. He confronted this mightyalliance head-on, insisting that churchmen hadno right to intimidate their parishioners intovoting against the Liberals. Huge crowds cheeredhim when he said that one could be a goodCatholic and good Liberal at the same time.

Back in Ottawa, Laurier’s analytic intelligence,personal magnetism and brilliance in debatebrought him to be regarded as the strongestQuebec member in the Liberal Party. Recognizing

him as their deadliest adversary, the Conser-vatives resorted to bribes, physical violence andthreats of hellfire from the pulpits to defeat himin his riding in 1877. Liberal Prime MinisterAlexander Mackenzie cleared a seat in Quebec Eastwhich Laurier won in a by-election. Mackenzieappointed him his Quebec lieutenant and Ministerof Inland Revenue.

After Macdonald’s Conservatives bounced backinto power in 1878, he gave way to the languidindifference which had always formed part of hischaracter. Throughout the story of Laurier wefind an absence of ambition and a hesitancy toexercise his prodigious political gifts. It was withmarked reluctance that he answered his party’scall to its leadership in 1887. He argued that forthe Liberals to choose a French Roman Catholicto carry their banner was a mistake.

So it appeared. The fact that the mainly-EnglishLiberal caucus insisted that he was "the onlyman" is testimony to the greatness they detectedin him. It was a singularly bold move for themto make. Simple arithmetic dictated that if theywere ever to regain power, they must appeal tothe English majority. And English-French rela-tions had seldom been worse- the hanging ofLouis Riel two years previously had the languagegroups glaring in outright hatred at each other.

"More British than the king,more Catholic than the pope"

Not the least of the many ironies in Laurier’scareer was that the issue which propelled himinto the Prime Minister’s office in 1896 was amanifestation of English hostility to the Frenchpresence in Canada. Manitoba had abolishedFrench Catholic schools. When the federal Con-servative government prepared legislation toreinstate French education, the provincial govern-ment refused to obey it. In the election thatensued, Laurier said he saw no hope of the Federalauthority running the educational system inManitoba.

He characteristically promised to deal with thedispute through conciliation. Though he wasdenounced as the anti-Christ by the Quebec

clergy, he carried the country with a handsomemajority, including his native province. By makingLiberalism respectable, he had broken theChurch’s stranglehold on politics in Quebec.

He set out to govern a country "part of whosepeople are more British than the king and partmore Catholic than the pope," as the historianArthur Lower put it. His first move was to devisea compromise whereby instruction in French andCatholicism was given in Manitoba public schools.

His long (15-year) tenure in office began withsunny portents. The late 1890s and early 1900sare often referred to as a golden era, and Laurier’sfirst few years as Canada’s leader were quiteliterally tinged with gold. The stampede to theKlondike was on, contributing to a strong re-covery. Another golden-hued bonanza was beingreaped in Western Canada in the form of wheat.

Grain-growing on the northern plains hadalways been plagued by the cold climate. Nowfarmers were planting a new strain of wheatwhich was not only frost-resistant but of the finestquality ever grown. The demand for the producton world markets doubled and redoubled; still,tens of millions of acres of potential productiveCanadian soil went unoccupied. Laurier’s Minis-ter of the Interior, Clifford Sifton, mounted anintensive campaign to populate the West.

It falls to few political leaders to bring about afundamental change in their countries. But acompletely different Canada did emerge fromLaurier’s regime. His government brought in mil-lions of immigrants from the Slavic, Germanicand Scandanavian regions of Europe. As theEuropeans poured into the West, the old French-British make-up of Canada was altered forever;Canadian multiculturalism was born.

The development was directly in line withLaurier’s social vision. As a French-Canadian hewas acutely aware that Canadians could never bea uniform nationality. There would be no meltingpot on this side of the U.S. border. Instead therewould be Laurier’s image of a great cathedralconstructed of diverse materials: "I want the

marble to remain the marble; the granite toremain the granite; the oak to remain the oak;and out of all these elements I would build anation great among the nations of the world."

The new markets created by the filling-up of theWest brought prosperity to Central Canada asmanufacturing flourished under the protectionof the tariff barriers earlier erected by the Con-servatives. Laurier was a free trader at heart, buthe saw no reason to interfere with a good thing.He did, however, pass legislation which had theeffect of offering a trade preference to GreatBritain. The measure brought him popularity inthe mother country.

He accepted a knighthood and spoke feelinglyabout Canada’s attachment to the empire. Yetwhen British ministers broached the idea of anEmpire unified in foreign policy, defence andtrade, he firmly turned them down.

His next task was to equip Canada to take ad-vantage of its new-found riches. The singletranscontinental railway line could not be ex-pected to handle all the traffic in grain and othernatural resources which was welling up in theWest. Laurier presided over the building of twomore transcontinental lines which spread theirtentacles throughout the prairies and into North-ern Quebec, Ontario and British Columbia. Thedetailed map of Canada, with all its dots, linesand squiggles, assumed its present shape.

The railways came to be known as Laurier’sfolly. Far too much trackage was built, and thetwo transcontinentals subsequently had to berationalized into the Canadian National systemat vast public expense. Laurier’s excesses wereusually excesses of hope, including his saying tothe effect that the twentieth century would belongto Canada. In that, he overestimated his com-patriots. Greatness comes only to mature soci-eties, and Canadians were still acting like head-strong children.

Laurier found himself in the role of the wiseand dignified paterfamilias intervening to putdown flare-ups in a quarrelsome family. He had touse all his skills as a statesman to prevent themajor linguistic groups from flying at each other’sthroats.

Assailed by ultra-nationalistic Quebecers onone side and ultra-imperialistic Anglophones onthe other, he framed ingenious compromises onsuch issues as participation in the Boer war andimperial naval defence. These carried the bonusof giving Canada a greater degree of indepen-dence. But one issue proved beyond his formidablepowers of conciliation: the language of instructionin provincial schools.

Even as Canada took a long step towardsnationhood with the creation of Alberta andSaskatchewan in 1905, the old dispute reared upas ugly as ever. Laurier had to back down on apromise that the provinces would have separateCatholic schools when it became clear to him thatit would only add to religious intolerance if thefederal government tried to enforce its will on themajority of provincial voters. His former protege,Henri Bourassa, spoke for many French-Canad-ians when he called this a betrayal of the rightto their own language and religion.

’ Faith is better than doubtand love is better than hate"

Bourassa formed a bizarre alliance with theright-wing Quebec Bleus and the Ontario Toriesto defeat Laurier in the 1911 election. The issueswere whether Canada would build its own navyand whether it should negotiate a free tradeagreement with the United States. Laurier wasdamned as a lackey to the British by the nation-alists of Quebec and as a traitor to the empire bythe ultra-imperialists of Ontario. A few yearslater he was accused of selling Canada’s soul toFrench-Canadian interests when, as OppositionLeader, he honoured a pledge to oppose conscrip-tion during the First World War.

Many of his senior English-speaking colleaguesdeserted him over the conscription issue, joiningthe coalition Unionist government under SirRobert Borden. The election results in 1917 placedhim in a position which he had spent most ofhis life trying to avoid, as the leader of a partybased almost wholly in French Quebec. Always a

frail man, he was both sick in body and sick atheart at his rejection by his English-speakingsupporters. In his utter disillusionment he couldwell have abandoned his pan-Canadian ideals andbecome the nagging voice of Quebec disaffection.

But he continued to cling to his personal credo.In a speech in the closing days of his life, heenumerated all the problems of race, religion andconflicting loyalties that hung on the country. Headded: "Let me tell you that for the solution ofthese problems you have a safe guide, an unfailinglight if you remember that faith is better thandoubt and love is better than hate."

He died at the age of 77 in February 1919,and the newspapers counted his achievements. Itwas an impressive list, but not nearly as impres-sive as it looks now. We can see that he setCanada on the road to full independence, that hefilled in the map of the country, that he founded apolitical dynasty, that he put a multiculturalstamp on our society. At the time, though, his lifeappeared to have ended in failure. He may havethought so himself at his last breath.

He had talked about his dying hour a few yearsearlier. "I cannot hope that I shall see much of thedevelopment which the future has in store for mycountry," he said, "but whenever my eyes shallclose to the light it is my wish -- nay my hope --that they shall close on a Canada united in itselements, united in every particular, every ele-ment cherishing the tradition of its past, and allunited in cherishing still more hope for thefuture." That this was not to be was because SirWilfrid Laurier was so far ahead of his times.

He could not even now close his eyes on theunited Canada of his dreams. But he could seea Canada in which the last thing that mattersabout a candidate is whether he is Protestant orCatholic; a Canada which takes orders from noother authority; a Canada which, for the mostpart, respects the cultural individuality of itsracial constituents. So the torments and sorrowsof this gentle and generous soul were not wasted.His hopes for future generations have been par-tially fulfilled, and, God willing, Canadians maylive up to his leadership yet.