The Lost Prime Ministers by Michael Hill

Author:Michael Hill [Hill, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Canada / Post-Confederation (1867-)
ISBN: 9781459749344
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Published: 2022-01-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Sir Mackenzie Bowell:

The Accidental Prime Minister

THE WHITE-HAIRED BUT SPRIGHTLY MAN with the carefully coiffed beard to match his hair sat in his office at the Department of Trade and Commerce the morning of December 12, 1894. He and Finance Minister George Foster were chatting about that day’s agenda for the House of Commons. When an ashen-faced aide barged into his office holding a telegram, Bowell had no inkling of what had happened hours before in London, England. The cable was shocking. Reading the telegram, his face went nearly as white as his snowy beard.

“11:36 a.m., Dec.12, 1894. Reported from Windsor Castle that Sir John Thompson expired after meeting of privy council.…”

At first, Bowell refused to believe it.

“It is mere newspaper rumour,” he said flatly to Foster.

The previous year, there had been a false report about Thompson’s demise while he’d been in Paris. Rumour and pure fabrication often sold newspapers. No one knew better than the crotchety owner of the local Belleville daily. Surely, he thought, this was what was happening once again.

Within half an hour, however, an official from the CPR in Montreal confirmed the sad news. Charles Tupper had sent a message to validate the story. Bowell laid the telegrams on his desk and began to cry. The two men had been more than simply colleagues. Bowell had visited the prime minister at his Muskoka retreat the previous summer.

The sudden, unexpected death of Sir John Sparrow Thompson meant that Canada was to see yet another prime minister assume the post as a result of a death in office. First Macdonald, now Thompson. Even the man between them, J.J. Abbott, had left office with a terminal diagnosis. Whoever was selected would be the fourth man to hold the title in the space of three and a half years, heir to a job that seemed ominously fatal.

Although Bowell would never have wanted to admit it, whatever unifying force that Thompson had brought to the Conservative government ranks suddenly vaporized with his untimely end.

Almost instantly, the party divided itself once more into bickering cliques made up of men who were separated by their positions on the issues of the day — religion, language, reciprocity, the imperial connection. A few of the politicians had personal ambition that motivated their actions, but as had been the case three years earlier when Macdonald died suddenly, there was no obvious person to grasp the reins of power.

Bowell himself had limited ambitions as a politician. Yes, he wanted the recognition and perks that came with being an important man in Ottawa, but he did not pine for the job as Canada’s leader. He knew his limitations and had never harboured ambition to be more than a well-respected Cabinet minister. But in the end, the party, more out of necessity than any kind of enthusiasm, fell in line behind the man who was leader of the government in the Senate, Sir Mackenzie Bowell.

Thompson of course had not looked ahead to who’d follow him as leader. Being a

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