Bennett Revised

No Canadian prime minister experienced a more grotesque transformation of his public image while in office than Richard Bedford Bennett. In 1930, the voters saw him as a self-made millionaire whose financial know-how and can-do spirit could pull the country from the mire of the Great Depression, and they awarded him a Conservative majority government. After five years in power he had become an almost cartoonish villain, an overweight and arrogant rich man who behaved like a dictator, lived in luxury while the homeless slept on park benches and pledged to put the “iron heel of ruthlessness” to those who protested against his government. The Tories used the slogan “Stand by Canada” in the election of 1935, but the voters refused to stand by them, and Bennett was dealt a humiliating defeat. Three years later he would leave Canada forever to live in England and become a second-rate member of the British nobility. When he died in 1947, alone in his bathtub, he was still among the...