We’re Still Watching

I don’t know about you, but I’d sure like to read more about Sir Robert Borden. Now there was a prime minister. He served for nearly nine years—longer than Pearson or Diefenbaker and almost as long as Mulroney. To last that long, right through World War One, he built Canada’s only formal coalition government on a policy of conscription that provoked a national unity crisis on a scale few of us today can imagine.

Borden introduced rural mail delivery, the income tax and the National Research Council. He was fearful of U.S. dominance, so he won the great reciprocity election of 1911 by opposing free trade. He was loyal to Britain, but adamant that that must not mean Canada could let itself be slighted for its mighty war effort. By the time he was done, this country was far closer to real independence than had seemed possible when he started. Through it all, his management style was the damnedest thing: more than once, when his factious caucus seemed too much to...