The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin

By provoking conflict over language and religion, McCarthy had blocked Macdonald’s chances of handing over either to Langevin, the Quebecker, or Thompson, the Catholic convert, whose sons attended a Jesuit boarding school in England. In any case, even in his mid-seventies, Macdonald was not going to be pushed. Late in 1889, an anonymous letter informed him that D’Alton McCarthy was alleging that the prime minister had lost his grip. Macdonald scribbled a confrontational endorsement: “Dear McCarthy, Who is your friend?” McCarthy, of course, backed off in embarrassment. Whatever their differences about Canada’s future, “you were never in better form to lead your party than you are just now.”

      In March 1890 there came a further blow. J.-I. Tarte, a Quebec Conservative, briefed Macdonald about contract scams within Langevin’s department, Public Works. Although Macdonald refused to censure his long-time ally — a Public Works contract in Kingston was less than pure — Langevin was no longer a possible prime minister. When Tupper returned to Ottawa in January 1891, Macdonald “looked up wearily from his papers” and greeted him: “I wish to God you were in my place.” “Thank God I am not,” Tupper replied. “We would all like to walk in your footsteps,” Thompson wrote three months later, “but not in your shoes!” Only death would release Sir John A. Macdonald from office.

      Macdonald now faced one last titanic electoral struggle. Wilfrid Laurier, Liberal leader since 1887, had responded to the yearning desire of Ontario farmers to sell their crops in the United States by endorsing “Unrestricted Reciprocity.” Canada would drop its tariffs against American goods and produce, encouraging Washington to open its markets in return. Nobody explained why the Americans should act with such uncharacteristic generosity. A deluxe version of “U.R.,” Commercial Union, committed Ottawa to adopting America’s tariffs against the rest of the world, so that British and German goods could not enter the United States through the Canadian back door. To Macdonald, U.R. and “C.U.” threatened the existence of an independent Canada itself. If five million Canadians integrated their economy with sixty-three million Americans, what would happen if the United States declared war on Britain? Canadians would be forced to choose between their prosperity and their allegiance. To Macdonald, “U.R. meant annexation.”

      At first, Macdonald assumed that U.R. “will be as dead as Julius Caesar” before the next election came round in 1892. But, in October 1890, Congress enacted the McKinley Tariff, targeting farm produce and pushing up America’s already high import duties to new levels. It would be suicidal to campaign in rural Ontario once the 1891 harvest demonstrated to farmers their exclusion from American markets. Although he felt “the weight of 76 years greatly,” in January 1891 Macdonald once again plunged Canada into a winter election. It was an unedifying campaign. “Nice chap” was his private assessment of Laurier, but publicly Macdonald accused the opposition of “veiled treason,” branding all Liberals as annexationist plotters. His campaign slogan was “The Old Flag, The Old Policy, The Old Leader.” The Old Leader only just survived the exhausting campaign. On a freezing February night, over-enthusiastic supporters paraded him through the streets of Napanee, where he had first run a law office almost sixty years earlier. By the time he arrived in Kingston, he was near collapse. His voice fell silent during the final week before polling day, on March 5, when the government was narrowly re-elected. Macdonald lost ground in central Canada, but secured a working majority from the “shreds and patches,” as Ontario Liberals arrogantly termed the Maritimes and western Canada.

      “I overworked myself during the campaign and forgot I was 76,” Macdonald confessed. But when the new Parliament assembled, he taunted Laurier: “J’y suis, j’y reste” — here I am, here I stay. It was the only occasion he ever spoke French in the House. Six weeks later, he was dead. The campaign against Langevin destroyed Macdonald. On May 11, Parliament agreed to investigate Tarte’s sensational charges of corruption in a Quebec dockyard contract. But there was a skeleton in Macdonald’s own political cupboard. He had rewarded Kingston for re-electing

       him in 1887 by gifting the city a dry dock, to create jobs in ship repairing. The contract had gone to the lowest bidder, the unknown Andrew C. Bancroft, who had promptly formed a partnership with the Connolly brothers, experienced contractors

       — and also involved in the controversial Quebec project. Bancroft apparently signed the contract and definitely cashed the cheques, but the Connolly brothers built the dockyard. Costs steadily rose, and Public Works nodded through the increases. Bancroft was invisible because he did not exist. His invention was a device to hand the Kingston contract to the Connolly brothers. It defies belief that Macdonald, Kingston’s MP, knew nothing of the scam. As Tarte unfolded his charges on May 11, 1891, Macdonald would have foreseen that he faced the same campaign of embarrassing accusations and shaming revelations that had unseated him in the 1873 Pacific Scandal. This time, aged seventy-six, there could be no way back from disgrace.

      Sir John A. Macdonald appeals to farmers and factory workers to save the National Policy in 1891. He barely survived the election campaign.

      On May 12, the day after Tarte’s bombshell, Sir John A. Macdonald suffered a stroke, so slight he hoped to disguise the episode even from Agnes. Indeed, Thompson thought him “well and bright again” when he returned to Parliament on Friday, May 22. However, that evening, his implacable foe Cartwright spoke with menacing sarcasm about Macdonald’s generosity to Kingston, hinting at revelations regarding “Mr. Connolly.” The House rose late but the prime minister lingered by his desk, as if instinct told him he would never return. Eventually, a colleague tactfully suggested it was “about time boys like you were home in bed.” That weekend, Macdonald fell ill, and for the next two weeks, he fought for his life. “Condition hopeless,” was the medical verdict on May 29, as a series of strokes gradually destroyed him.

      Parliament, government, even Canada itself — all virtually went into abeyance. It was an odd succession crisis, for the two most obvious candidates, Thompson and Tupper, were determined to avoid the job. Despite his previous doubts, Macdonald had urged his colleagues to “rally around Abbott,” but he had changed his mind when the Senate leader begged to be omitted from the Cabinet: Abbott was “too selfish” to lead. But, with Langevin politically wounded, Abbott became the compromise successor.

      In the cities, bells announced that the battle was over. Minutes after Macdonald died at 10:15 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, 1891, they were mournfully tolling in Ottawa. Telegraph messages flashed across the country, and soon after eleven, the solemn peals broke out in Toronto. Genuine grief swept Canada, with headlines such as “Dead” in Qu’Appelle and “He Is Gone” in Victoria. The whole country paused for his funeral: at Brandon, even the locomotives were draped in mourning. John A. Macdonald was interred in Kingston, next to his mother “as I promised her that I should be there buried.” Thirty years on, Helen still controlled her son.

      In his tribute to Macdonald, opposition leader Laurier thought it “almost impossible” that Canada could “continue without him.” Yet, curiously, Sir John A. was soon largely forgotten. Journalist Hector Charlesworth recalled that “to vast numbers of the community he seemed the prop which supported the whole structure of Canadian nationality.” When his Dominion carried on without its creator, that mirage of Macdonald’s indispensability was dissipated. Britain’s Conservatives had built a million-strong campaigning organization, the Primrose League, on the memory of Disraeli, but nothing came of a proposal to form a Macdonald Guard to defend his ideals. His memory was discredited by the emerging tide of scandal. A month after Macdonald’s death, the mythical Bancroft was exposed — although, like Macdonald himself, the Kingston contract scandal was hastily forgotten, especially by biographers. Although Abbott was only caretaker prime minister, in August he fired Langevin from Cabinet. “The Old Man’s friends must feel … that he was fortunate in his time of dying,” the Globe cruelly remarked. “The most enthusiastic partisan of Sir John Macdonald would not attempt the hopeless task of defending his political morality,” pronounced a British commentator. Instead, Macdonald’s admirers entombed him in bronze across Canada: Hamilton unveiled the first statue, in 1893; Regina only raised enough funds to erect its joyless John A. in 1967. In Toronto’s Queen’s Park, a round-shouldered Sir John A. Macdonald seems