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The Many Lives of William Lyon Mackenzie King by Barry Cahill Pdf
W. L. Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was Canada’s longest-serving, best-known and certainly most unusual prime minister. The keeper of a famous series of candid personal diaries, he is a gift to the biographer. King did not live long enough to write his planned memoirs, and his official biography remains long unfinished. As a result, some 24 biographies of him have been published, with different purposes and from different perspectives. They are a study in extreme contrasts. This is a critical collective history of those works, published between 1922 and 2014.
William Lyon Mackenzie King, twice former Prime Minister of Canada, was a brilliant tactician, was passionately committed to Canadian unity, and was a protector of the underdog, introducing such cornerstones of Canada’s social safety net as unemployment insurance, family allowances and old-age pensions. At the same time, he was insecure, craved flattery, became upset at minor criticism, and was prone to fantasy—especially about the Tory conspiracy against him. King loosened the Imperial connection with Britain and was wary of American military and economic power. Yet he loved all things British and acted like a praised schoolboy when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt treated him as an equal. This first major biography of Mackenzie King in 30 years mines the pages of his remarkable diary, at 30,000 pages one of the most significant and revealing political documents in Canada’s history and a guide to the deep and often moving inner conflicts that haunted Mackenzie King. With animated prose and a subtle wit, Allan Levine draws a multidimensional portrait of this most compelling of politicians.
When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King's death, the public was bombarded with stories about "Weird Willie," the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King's character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives. Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King's diary and details the specific decisions of King's literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King's diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King's diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation. Presenting extensive archival research in a captivating narrative, Unbuttoned traces the rise of a political culture that privileged the individual as the ultimate source of truth, and made Canadians rethink what they wanted to know about politicians.
Advance Praise for King "Here we have Allan Levine, one of the aces of Canadian historical chronicles, channelling Mackenzie King. And what a story they have to tell: our longest-serving prime minister, getting advice from his dog and having two-way conversations with his long-dead mother. If Canadian history was ever dull, it isn't now. Get this book." Book jacket.
Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was Canada’s tenth and longest serving prime minister and an important figure on the international scene, especially during the Second World War. This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of Mackenzie King.
William Lyon Mackenzie King, Volume 1, 1874-1923 by Robert Dawson Pdf
When William Lyon Mackenzie King retired in 1948, he had held office as Prime Minister of Canada for a total of 7829 days, a longer term of service than that of any other Prime Minister in the history of the British Commonwealth. Like Roosevelt, his contemporary of many momentous years, he was greatly admired and greatly hated, but none dispute the tremendous influence he exerted on the history of his country, or, indeed, his place in world history. In this official biography, great days of Canadian history are given life and meaning, and at the centre of all the events is a phenomenal personality gifted with intelligence, intrepidity, and luck, with amazing insight into his times and the nature of his political occupation. The biography, based largely on sources hitherto unavailable, permits the reader to witness the unfolding of important events as a chief participant himself saw them and to view far-reaching decisions through the eyes of the man who made them, for Mackenzie King speaks in his own words through much of these volumes. They allow us to observe an extraordinarily complex and powerful personality at work. In this first volume, Mackenzie King's life and political career are traced up to the firm establishment of his first administration as Prime Minister. The forces in is background, education, and early interests which eventually led him into politics are brought out vividly. It is both fascinating and touching, for instance, to observe in letters and personal papers the intimate family relationships which so largely determined what Mackenzie Kind became. Once public service had been chosen, he displayed such talents that a leading role seems almost inevitable to all who knew him.
William Lyon Mackenzie King served all of Canada as Prime Minister. He was Canadas longest serving Prime Minister and for all other Commonwealth countries, too. His successive governments created the Canadian Welfare state and the place we once held in the world. King strove for the social cushion of a united, autonomous and prosperous country. A lifetime later all Canadians still benefit from his initiative and skill. Kings life followed the Social Gospel in the political world and in the pioneering study of industrial relations. His work, relatives and friends; successes and disappointments, are presented as you have never encountered them before.
William Lyon Mackenzie King, Volume II, 1924-1932 by H. Blair Neatby Pdf
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 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.
Mrs. King is the superbly told story of a woman lost in the shadows of Canadian history. Daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie and mother of Canada's longest-serving prime minister, Isabel Mackenzie King was intimately involved in the changing political and social landscape of Canada. Yet we have known very little about her. In this meticulously researched and beautifully crafted biography, award-winning writer Charlotte Gray pulls Isabel Grace Mackenzie King into the light while painting a highly absorbing portrait of our Canadian past.
The Age of Mackenzie King by Ferns, Henry,Bernard Ostry Pdf
William Lyon Mackenzie King played a vital role in shaping Canadian politics, economics and international relations from 1900 to the present. His importance is indicated by the energy of Liberal party historians in creating an official version of life.
William Lyon Mackenzie King, Volume III, 1932-1939 by H. Blair Neatby Pdf
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.
