Big Man on the Hill

Donald Stovel Macdonald was probably one of Canada’s most capable federal politicians since Confederation, and his memoirs are a welcome addition to the collection of accounts that make up our nation’s history. But, as is always the case with this genre, we need to read across the grain, and stay fully alert to the memoirist’s temptation to be self-serving.

If not born to the purple, Macdonald came into this world in 1933 with almost every conceivable advantage. His father was a senior public servant—the Dominion Forester—and there was wealth on his mother’s side. “Our family didn’t suffer during the Great Depression,” he notes. He attended exclusive Ashbury College in Ottawa because his family thought the public school system was getting too crowded, and he lived in upper-class Rockcliffe Village where his elite neighbours, young and old, included Ian Scott, Gratton O’Leary, Blair Fraser, and John and Bob Rae. He learned to play cricket, and seems to have done...