The ironies of history bite, and sometimes they puncture hard. Thomas White was a Liberal who had faithfully supported Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his policies, but in 1911 the prime minister went a bit too far for this Toronto banker, when he signed a free trade agreement with the United States (more accurately, a reciprocity agreement to lower some, not all, tariffs). Laurier was pro-British if necessary, but not necessarily pro-British. The same went for his policies on trade with the Americans.
In protesting against the new agreement, White and several other businessmen soon became known as the “Toronto Eighteen.” Most of them were former Liberals who wanted to maintain tariff walls (and all they symbolized) and could no longer support their own chief. White was happy to write cheques and stay on the sidelines, but when Robert Borden and the Conservative Party formed a government in the fall of 1911, he was asked to put his neck on the line. Even though White would...
Patrice Dutil is a professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Toronto Metropolitan University. He founded the Literary Review of Canada and is the author of Sir John A. Macdonald & the Apocalyptic Year 1885.
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