Prime Ministers | canuckstorian

Could the Chairman and CEO of Canada Steamship Lines, become the Prime Minister of the country?

Paul Martin sure thought he could! December 12th, 2003 Paul Martin is sworn in as Canada’s 21st Prime Minister. This Canadian History for Kids, Sketches of Canada, looks at the career of Paul Martin.

Martin was born in Windsor, Ontario. His father, Paul Joseph James Martin, served thirty-three years as a member of the Canadian House of Commons, and was a Cabinet minister in the Liberal governments of Prime Ministers W.L. Mackenzie King, Louis St. Laurent, Lester B. Pearson, and Pierre E. Trudeau.

Martin contracted polio in 1946 at the age of eight (like his father had). He grew up in Windsor and Ottawa. To give him the opportunity to improve his French, his parents enrolled him in a private French-language middle school, École Garneau in Ottawa. He then briefly attended the University of Ottawa.

Martin graduated from St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto with a B.A. in history and philosophy in 1961. He then attended the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where he received a LL.B. in 1964. He was called to the Ontario bar in 1966.

Martin was named president in 1973 of one of Power Corp’s larger subsidiaries, Canada Steamship Lines, and in 1981 he took the considerable gamble of buying the company himself. He restructured CSL, selling off money-losing operations, expanding the company beyond its traditional Great Lakes routes and building a fleet of deep-sea vessels equipped with self-unloading technology. CSL became an international business giant, and Martin a wealthy man.

Martin ran for Parliament in 1988, winning election in the Montreal riding of Lasalle-Émard. He served as Jean Chrétien’s minister of finance from 1993-2002. When he arrived at Finance, the government was spending $42 billion a year more than it was taking in. Martin wiped out that deficit within four years.
When Martin became Liberal leader in November 2003 and prime minister the next month, he was full of ideas about how to make government more dynamic.

But the Martin Liberals were immediately gripped by a major scandal left over from the Chretien years, involving the mishandling of millions of dollars allocated to a government sponsorship program.

On election day, 23 January 2006, he finished second and immediately resigned from the Liberal leadership.

Martin was a good and able man who had finally achieved his destiny, only to be defeated by his own accidents and the accidents of history..

Mackenzie Bowell was the only prime minister of Canada to be forced to resign by his own cabinet, which he called a “nest of traitors.”

December 21st, 1894, Mackenzie Bowell sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada after news arrives of the death of John Thompson. This Canadian History for Kids, Sketches of Canada, looks at the career of Mackenzie Bowell.

Bowell was born in Rickinghall, Suffolk, England. In 1832 his family emigrated to Belleville, Ontario, where he apprenticed with the printer at the town newspaper, The Belleville Intelligencer. He became a successful printer and editor with that newspaper, and later its owner.

Bowell was first elected to the House of Commons in 1867, as a Conservative, for the riding of North Hastings, Ontario. He held his seat for the Conservatives when they lost the election of January 1874.

Later that year he was instrumental in having Louis Riel expelled from the House. In 1878, with the Conservatives again governing, he joined the cabinet as Minister of Customs.
In December 1894, Prime Minister Sir John Thompson died suddenly and Bowell, as the most senior Cabinet minister, was appointed in Thompson’s place by the Governor General. Bowell thus became the second of just two Canadian Prime Ministers to hold that office while serving in the Senate rather than the House of Commons. (The first was John Abbott.)
Ruling ineffectively over feuding colleagues and without any personal policy initiatives, it was Bowell’s fate to find himself head of a government embroiled in the defence of education rights of Manitoba’s Catholic francophones.

The Manitoba Schools Question gathered force as the symbol of the great divide in Canadian politics between English and French-Canadians and between federal and provincial rights. Bowell’s government could not deal with the crisis. Bowell was finally forced to resign in 1896, handing over the government to Sir Charles Tupper, Macdonald’s old colleague. Sir Mackenzie Bowell died on December 10, 1917.

March 31, 1958 – Federal Election – John Diefenbaker wins Canada’s 24th general election

This Canadian History for Kids exclusive, looks at Canada’s 13th Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, Dief the Chief!

Diefenbaker was born on September 18, 1895, in Neustadt, Ontario. The Diefenbaker family moved west in 1903, for his father to accept a position near Fort Carlton, then in the Northwest Territories (now in Saskatchewan).

John Diefenbaker had been interested in politics from an early age, and told his mother at the age of eight or nine that he would some day be Prime Minister.

After graduating from high school in Saskatoon, in 1912, Diefenbaker entered the University of Saskatchewan. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915, and his Master of Arts the following year.

He ran for Parliament in 1925 and 1926, losing both times. He lost races for the provincial legislature in 1929 and for mayor of Prince Albert in 1933. As party leader, he led the Saskatchewan Conservatives to complete defeat in 1938. They won no seats.

Once he was finally elected to Ottawa in 1940, he sat in opposition for 17 years, he championed the rights of “average” Canadians and upset wealthy Tory supporters.

Diefenbaker became Canada’s 13th Prime Minister in 1957 when he defeated Louis St. Laurent’s astonished Liberals on a “Canada First” theme of building “one Canada” with “equal opportunity” for every individual and every province.

Canadian History for Kids’ Highlights as Prime Minister

Highlights of the John Diefenbaker years as Prime Minister of Canada include:

appointed Ellen Fairclough the first Canadian woman federal cabinet minister 1957
Canadian Bill of Rights 1960
vote extended to native peoples in Canada 1960
Royal Commission on Health Services 1961
Agriculture Rehabilitation and Development Act 1961
found market in China for prairie wheat
created National Productivity Council 1963
expanded old age pensions
introduced simultaneous translation in House of Commons

March 31, 1958 – Federal Election – John Diefenbaker wins Canada’s 24th general election

This Canadian History for Kids exclusive, looks at Canada’s 13th Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, Dief the Chief!

John Diefenbaker had been interested in politics from an early age, and told his mother at the age of eight or nine that he would some day be Prime Minister.

Once he was finally elected to Ottawa in 1940, he sat in opposition for 17 years, he championed the rights of “average” Canadians and upset wealthy Tory supporters.

Canadian History for Kids’ Highlights as Prime Minister

Highlights of the John Diefenbaker years as Prime Minister of Canada include:

appointed Ellen Fairclough the first Canadian woman federal cabinet minister 1957
Canadian Bill of Rights 1960
vote extended to native peoples in Canada 1960
Royal Commission on Health Services 1961
Agriculture Rehabilitation and Development Act 1961
found market in China for prairie wheat
created National Productivity Council 1963
expanded old age pensions
introduced simultaneous translation in House of Commons

May 22, 1979 – Federal Election – Joe Clark leads Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PCs) to minority power.

This Canadian History for Kids exclusive looks at Canada’s 16th Prime Minister, Joe Clark.

Joe Who?

Joe Clark!

Charles Joseph “Joe” Clark, the youngest prime minister to take office, was born June 5, 1939 at High River, Alberta.

At the University of Alberta, he became the national Progressive Conservative student president. He taught himself French and worked for the Party in Ottawa, before being elected an MP in 1972. In 1973 he married Maureen McTeer, a lawyer.

Even though he was inexperienced, Clark rose quickly in federal politics, entering the House of Commons in the 1972 election and winning the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 1976.

He came to power in the 1979 election, defeating the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau and ending sixteen continuous years of Liberal rule. Taking office the day before his 40th birthday, Clark is the youngest person to become Prime Minister.

In December 1979, Clark’s finance minister tabled his first budget calling for “short term pain for long term gain.” Three days later, the government fell on a vote of non confidence

In the 1980 election Clark again faced Pierre Trudeau, who had returned to lead the Liberals. Clark suffered from a public image of weakness and inexperience. In an astonishing turnabout, the Liberals won a majority government. From 1980 to 1983 Clark led the Opposition. Clark appeared headed for victory in the next federal election, but in 1983 he tried to silence his critics in the party by calling for a leadership convention. In it he lost to Brian Mulroney on the fourth ballot.

Oddly, Clark won greater national respect after his defeat. He was an effective Minister of External Affairs in the Mulroney cabinet. After the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, the prime minister called upon Clark to build national consensus for constitutional reform.

He became one of the chief architects of the Charlottetown Accord, which also failed. Citing exhaustion from the long constitutional debate, Joe Clark announced in February 1993 that he would not run in the next election.

Still relatively young in political terms, he had become one of Canada’s “elder statesmen.”

June 15, 1891 – John Abbott sworn in as Prime Minister after being chosen leader of Conservative Party on John A. Macdonald’s death.

This Canadian History for Kids exclusive looks at Canada’s 3rd Prime Minister, Sir John Abbott.

The man that never wanted to be Prime Minister! And the first Prime Minister to be born on Canadian soil!

Sir John Joseph Caldwell Abbott was born in St. Andrews, Lower Canada (now Saint-André-d’Argenteuil, Quebec) in 1821. Abbott received an first-rate education from his missionary father.

At age 17, he studied accounting before entering McGill law school, eventually becoming its dean. Serious, informed, and rational, Abbott’s dislike of conflict and distrust of emotion helped establish him as a superb negotiator and one of Canada’s most successful commercial lawyers.

Abbott began his political life with open support for Canada’s annexation by the US in 1849 and then lukewarm support for Confederation. A practical Tory, he was elected to Parliament in 1867, 1872, and 1878 before being appointed Senator and Cabinet Minister without portfolio in 1887.

When John A. Macdonald died in office in 1891, Sir John Abbott became prime minister, mainly because the Tories could not agree on a successor. Abbott himself said he was chosen “because I am not particularly obnoxious to anyone.”

As prime minister, Abbott inherited a weak government that was not ready to meet a crisis over separate schools in Manitoba, tensions with the US over fisheries and trade, and a growing economic misery.

Nevertheless, in the 16 months he held office, Abbott shuffled his cabinet, forced the resignation of his corrupt Minister of Public Works, and undertook reform of the civil service.

The Conservatives won 42 of the 52 by-elections held during Abbott’s tenure, a sign of his effective leadership. But ill and exhausted, he resigned as prime minister in October 1892. Largely forgotten by history, John

Abbott deserves at the least to be remembered as a hardworking and competent prime minister for a government whose first leader could not be easily replaced.

He died on October 30, 1893.

August 7th, 1930, R. B. Bennett asked to form government on resignation of Mackenzie King. This Canadian History for Kids, Sketches of Canada, looks at the life of Canada’s 11th Prime Minister.

Richard Bedford Bennett was born on July 3, 1870 in Hopewell, New Brunswick. At age 23, Bennett graduated from Dalhousie Law School where he was known for his complex speeches and how rigid he was in matters of tobacco, alcohol, and fun.

Extremely successful as a lawyer in Calgary, Bennett was first elected to Parliament in the 1911 Conservative landslide. When Prime Minister Borden refused him a Cabinet post, “Bonfire Bennett,” as he was called, left politics.

This Canadian History for Kids article continues in 1921 when Arthur Meighen named Bennett his Minister of Justice. Five years later, he became Minister of Finance. Finally, at the Conservative Party’s first leadership convention in 1927, Bennett’s goal was realized when he was elected party leader. He ran an ground-breaking 1930 electoral campaign using mechanized mailing and radio.

Bennett seemed successful and confident, promising grand national projects, funds for the unemployed and elderly, and jobs. Bennett won the election with 137 seats.

Bennett dominated his ministers and annoyed most with his huge ego. He had promised to end unemployment by raising the tariff. But this policy failed and he received full blame for his government’s failure to relieve the stress of the Great Depression.

This Canadian History for Kids article continues on the eve of the 1935 election when Bennett announced a “New Deal,” with regulated working hours, minimum wages, unemployment insurance. But it was to late. He had disturbed both rich Conservatives and the suffering public and had been unable to deliver on his promises. Bennett’s Conservatives took only 40 seats to 171 for King’s Liberals, in that election.

As prime minister, Bennett created two powerful institutions, the Bank of Canada and the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Corporation (CRBC). Bennett died June 26, 1947 in Mickleham, Surrey, England. He is the only Canadian Prime Minister not buried in Canada.

Canadian History for Kids’ Highlights as Prime Minister:

The following measures were put in place while R.B. Bennett was Prime Minister of Canada
the Relief Act 1926
creation of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission 1932
creation of the Bank of Canada 1935
creation of the Canadian Wheat Board 1935

September 18, 1867, Sir John A., wins the First Dominion election. This Canadian History for Kids, Sketches of Canada, looks at the life of Canada’s 1st Prime Minister.

He was charming, extremely witty and very passionate about our new country, Canada! That’s our John A! Our founding father.

This Canadian History for Kids article begins when John A. Macdonald was born in Scotland. When he was a boy his family emigrated to Kingston, Upper Canada. He articled with a local lawyer, who died before Macdonald qualified, and Macdonald opened his own practice. He was involved in several high-profile cases and quickly became prominent in Kingston, which enabled him to seek and obtain a legislative seat in 1844.

Macdonald was the leading figure in the discussions and conferences, which resulted in the British North America Act and the birth of Canada as a nation on 1 July 1867.
Macdonald held the office for two terms, serving from July 1, 1867, to November 5, 1873, and again from October 17, 1878, to June 6, 1891.

Key accomplishments of his political career include being a Father of Confederation and seeing the provinces of Manitoba, British Columbia and Prince Edward Island join Confederation. He was an important figure in the creation of the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1871 to 1885 and in the creation of the Northwest Mounted Police in 1873. He was also behind the development of Canada’s first national park in Banff, Alberta, in 1885. He served as Canada’s Minister of Justice and Attorney General from 1867 to 1873 and was Leader of the Opposition from 1873 to 1878. He died on June 6, 1891, in Ottawa, Ontario.

Canadian History for Kids’ Highlights as Prime Minister

building a trans-continental railway, the Canadian Pacific Railway
building a nation with the entry into Confederation of Prince Edward Island, the Northwest Territories (including Alberta and Saskatchewan), Manitoba, and British Columbia
opening the West for settlement
creation of the North-West Mounted Police
the Northwest Rebellion and the hanging of Louis Riel
the National Policy of tariffs against imports to protect Canadian industry