Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers and the Media - Softcover

CHAPTER ONE

A Controlling Interest

I have been a good deal disappointed by the tone in which political warfare is conducted by the press. The terms in which you have been assailed quite exceed the license of electioneering language.
Lord Dufferin to John A. Macdonald, 1872

At the McGill University convocation in 1873, the governor general, Lord Dufferin, delivered a lengthy speech entirely in Greek. In attendance were John A. Macdonald and his French Canadian colleague Hector Langevin. On the train trip back to Ottawa, Langevin read a news report of the event which noted that Dufferin had spoken “the purest ancient Greek without mispronouncing a word.”
“Good Heavens,” said Langevin to Macdonald, “how did the reporter know that?”
“I told him,” replied Sir John.
“But you don’t know Greek!” exclaimed Langevin.
“True,” answered Macdonald, “but I know a little about politics.”1
Indeed he did. We like to think of Macdonald as being something of a charming and witty political genius. The truth was that he worked more diligently at the political game than any of his peers. While he had what is referred to today as a charismatic personality, his great success was due more to his ability “for managing other people,” as Lord Dufferin put it. He knew how to win over followers and keep them loyal. He treated backbenchers with the same respect accorded his cabinet ministers, could recall names of constituents he had not seen in five years, and “deemed no man beneath his notice.” “He never forgot,” John Willison wrote, “that popularity was power.”2
He could be devious, manipulative, even unscrupulous if it was necessary, although he was not corrupt. Apart from his exaggerated drinking problem, Macdonald is best remembered for the Pacific Scandal of 1873. It was alleged that he took money from Sir Hugh Allan in exchange for the contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), but this was probably more a case of foolishness and bad judgment than corruption. Those times dictated a different set of acceptable political rules than do current mores. It is often forgotten, for example, that there never would have been a Pacific Scandal had the Liberals not purchased stolen and incriminating documents for $5,000.
Such were the realities of political life in late nineteenth-century Canada. As a practical man, Macdonald accepted this; he also understood how to operate within the defined boundaries. Nothing illustrates this point more than his relationship with the press. Over more than a forty-year period, this was the arena in which Macdonald’s best and worst qualities as a politician were utilized, refined, and tested.
In 1885 Macdonald’s parliamentary office received thirty-seven daily and weekly newspapers from across the country. He read the major Montreal and Toronto papers each day, most often at bedtime, and later his secretaries prepared clippings for him to peruse. Even on his rare holidays he voraciously scanned the editorial pages. More importantly, he kept in close touch with most of the Conservative newspaper publishers in the Dominion, both large and small. He advised them what lines to take on policy, stroked their egos, and sometimes assured them that needed patronage was forthcoming.
No matter how trivial an issue, Macdonald refused to miss an opportunity to score a political point. The examples abound in his voluminous correspondence. As journalist Jeffrey Simpson has pointed out, Macdonald’s letters “brim with attention to a thousand details of politics.” In December 1868 he sent Daniel Morrison, the editor of the Conservative Daily Telegraph in Toronto, an article he had received from a Halifax Liberal paper that was critical of his rival George Brown. Nova Scotia Grits had never forgiven Brown for not consulting them before he joined the “Great Coalition” with Macdonald and Cartier in 1864 that led to Confederation. The article in question, Macdonald told Morrison, “pitches into Brown ... I leave [it] for your manipulation.”3
Less than two years later he wrote to Morrison again, this time explaining at length why the aging Francis Hincks, who had returned after fifteen years from his retreat as governor of Barbados and British Guiana to join Macdonald’s cabinet, had publicly attacked the Telegraph, a Conservative booster. Apparently Hincks had taken exception to comments made by one of the newspaper’s reporters. Macdonald conceded that it was a misunderstanding and then proceeded to tell Morrison – in a way only he could get away with – how appreciative he was of the Telegraph’s contribution to the Tory cause. He acknowledged that the newspaper should not be regarded as merely “a mouthpiece of a government” and that its influence depended on it “being supposed to speak its real sentiments.” Macdonald suggested that Morrison send a correspondent to Ottawa whom he could confide in from time to time. “It might add to the interest of your paper,” the prime minister noted. “However, you as a newspaper man know more about this kind of thing than I do.”4
In fact, Macdonald knew a great deal more about newspapers than he was willing to admit. By 1871 he had been the Dominion’s prime minister for four years and an active politician for twenty-eight. In the historic road he had travelled from his position as Kingston’s member in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, through his participation in the debates over Confederation in the early 1860s, to his role as the new Dominion’s first leader in 1867, Macdonald had received the best political education anyone would want. And from the day in April 1844 when the Kingston Herald published his first real political declaration, he was conscious of a newspaper’s tremendous impact.5 He also witnessed the rise of his opponent George Brown and the Liberals, assisted in no small way by the Toronto Globe, the most influential political organ of its time and for years to come. Using and manipulating the press to his own advantage became a part of Macdonald’s political arsenal.
This was certainly the case during the 1871 negotiations with the United States over the Washington Treaty, one of the most serious issues Macdonald faced in his first term in office. Though the British still controlled Canada’s foreign relations at this time, Prime Minister Macdonald was invited, in accordance with proper diplomatic etiquette, to join the British delegation in Washington during discussions about U.S.-Canada trade, fishing rights, and other issues still unsettled from the American Civil War years. (The Canadian government believed, for instance, that the U.S. government owed it compensation for the damage done during raids on Canada conducted by Irish Fenians from U.S. bases back in 1866.) Reluctantly, Macdonald left Ottawa for the American capital at the end of February 1871 and remained there for three long months. He was all too aware that he was regarded by the other members of the British negotiating team as a colonial inferior. He realized as well that the imperial government, desperate to establish friendly relations with the United States, would have no qualms about sacrificing Canadian interests to gain American favour. He was not disappointed.6
After months of dreary meetings and evenings spent socializing at Washington dinner parties, the Americans offered a cash payment for the use of Canadian fishing waters, a rather radical proposition, with no comprehensive reciprocal trade agreement as desired by Macdonald. By the time it was all over at the end of April, the British had bowed to the Americans’ unfavourable terms. They had sold fishing rights in Canada without the Dominion’s consent or approval.7
A frustrated Macdonald confided to Alexander Morris, one of his cabinet ministers: “Never in the whole course of my public life have I been in so disagreeable a position.”8 He was dejected, but not yet defeated. His strategy now revolved around whether to sign the treaty. He decided it would be best in the interests of the Empire to add his signature, but he did write formal letters to the British government noting his objections. These would be helpful later on.
His first general election as prime minister was about a year away. He knew that Brown and the Globe as well as other Liberal newspapers would attack him as a traitor. Controlling information about his position on the treaty therefore became essential. He instructed Morris “to make arrangements with the friendly newspapers ... to hold back, if possible, any expression of opinion on the Treaty when it is promulgated, until the Globe commits itself against the Treaty.” The idea was that Brown and the Grits would think Macdonald supported the treaty and would criticize him accordingly, and then Macdonald could reveal that he too objected to it. He and Brown would be on the same side of the issue and the treaty would be forgotten by the time the election campaign began. If, however, he confirmed his opposition immediately, he feared that Brown would find some way to support it.9 It was a shrewd manoeuvre by an experienced politician, and it worked.
As Macdonald anticipated, the Globe tore into the treaty and branded the prime minister a weak traitor. “Sir John Macdonald is but a poor parody of a statesman after all,” declared a Globe editorial on May 31. “Neither in his personal or political character has he ever shown moral or intellectual strength. He is smart and cunning but has more than once before now proved himself to be ‘too clever by half.’ At Washington he found not subservient tools, but men of infinitely superior calibre to himself and the natural weakness of his character appeared.” Such was the colourful language of 1871 editorials.
The loyal Conservative press was placed in a more difficult position because Macdonald had decided the best course to follow was silence. Amazingly, for twelve very long months he refused to comment; nor did he accept any invitations to speak at political gatherings, fearing that he would have to explain his treaty position.10 But the Tory press adhered to its leader’s wishes. Despite the Globe’s, daily abuse, the Brantford Courier defended Macdonald’s actions against the aggressive “Yankees,” while future prime minister Mackenzie Bowell’s Belleville Intelligencer argued that no opinion could be made about the treaty until Parliament debated it.
Eventually the British government came up with a guaranteed loan of £2.5 million for railways and canals in exchange for the Canadian Parliament’s ratification. Macdonald finally spoke on the issue in a two and a half hour speech on May 3, 1872. He played up his role in assisting both Anglo-American peace and the interests of the Empire.11 Thanks in large part to his ability to manipulate and slant the news, he turned a potential disaster into a triumph and beat Brown and the Globe – in this round at least.
George Brown was a large man, over six feet tall and powerfully built. Even by age thirty-five, he was balding and wore long, bushy, mutton-chop sideburns, as was the style of the day. He was a hard, dogmatic, and passionate man with strong beliefs about the freedom of religion, free speech, civil liberties, and the separation of church and state.12 Moreover, he was willing to fight for these ideas, no matter what the cost. He feared the power of the Catholic Church and resented how his French and English Conservative opponents, Macdonald and Cartier, had expanded the church’s power in the schools of Canada West. From the day in 1844 when he founded the Globe in Toronto, Brown became a major player in the political life of the country by establishing what proved to be one of the foundations of a lasting Liberal Party. He also set the standards by which all other newspapers and journalists were judged.
As a pioneer of the Canadian newspaper industry, Brown ensured that the Globe always had the most innovative machinery. It allowed him and his brother Gordon (who was appointed managing editor in 1853) to refine and transform the paper from a “mammoth blanket sheet” folded once to make four pages of thirty-six columns to a smaller eight-page version resembling the newspapers of today. The Browns experimented with new and clearer type, sent correspondents all over the country to cover stories, reported foreign as well as local news, and attracted large audiences in Toronto as well as in nearby towns with serialized literature and stories about sensational murder trials. This plus the Globe’s “ferocious editorials,” in which Brown and his writers “struck without mercy against the foes of Reform,” made the newspaper a powerful weapon.13
No newspaper was referred to in House of Commons debates more than the Globe; nor was one more widely read. It was said that before many Liberal politicians would speak on an issue, they would ask, “What will the Globe say?” It was sold in every train station, hotel, and bookstore in Ontario. Its denunciations and strong opinions were a daily topic of conversation. As veteran Liberal politician Sir Richard Cartwright so aptly put it, “There were probably many thousand voters in Ontario ... who hardly read anything except their Globe and their Bible.”14
For more than five decades, the Globe’s main target was John A. Macdonald, the Tory devil incarnate. No two men were as different in style and personality than Macdonald and Brown. Where Macdonald was easygoing, generally cheerful and good-natured, Brown was less accommodating, more strenuous and serious. That they clashed is not at all surprising.15
The root of their long feud stemmed from an incident in pre-Confederation days when they were both members from Canada West. In a violent outburst in 1856, Macdonald unfairly accused Brown of lying and falsifying evidence in his capacity as secretary of a major commission on conditions at Kingston Penitentiary that had reported in 1849.16 Unlike Macdonald, who rarely held a grudge, Brown did, and in his opinion Macdonald never publicly apologized for his vicious remarks. Brown remained bitter about this for the rest of his life and it coloured his view of John A. and his political methods.
As for Macdonald, his personal feelings towards Brown were reflected in one of his most quoted remarks: that Canadians “would rather have John A. drunk than George Brown sober.” Still, the Globe – the ‘Grit Organ’ as it was commonly referred to by Conservatives – could drive Macdonald to drink, and probably did on more than one occasion. He read it daily and had an army of newspaper publishers and supporters who kept him up to date on its most recent attacks.
For Macdonald, taking on the Globe was sometimes the best sport in town. When he was in Toronto, he stayed at the Queen’s Hotel, where he would hold court in the Red Parlour. Usually camped outside the Queen’s was the Globe’s Herbert Burrows, assigned to spy and report on Macdonald’s activities. Burrows did anything for a scoop. In 1881 the Conservatives held a convention in Toronto at the Grand Opera House, and the Globe was not invited. This didn’t stop Burrows. He paid off an Opera House employee and perched high above the stage, where he remained all day, taking notes. He was thus able to write an in-depth story, much to the anger of the local Tories. Macdonald admired Burrows so much that he later got him a job with the Toronto Empire, the Conservative Party organ in the late 1880s.17
More often, John A. received harsh and critical treatment by Globe writers, representative of the journalistic style of the era. He was condemned for his handling of Louis Riel and the Métis conflict in 1869 and for selling out Canada in the Washington Treaty of 1871. But in early April 1873, when Liberal Lucius Seth Huntington first raised the charges that Macdonald had awarded the Pacific Railw...