William Lyon Mackenzie King


The Right Honourable William Lyon
Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 -
July 22, 1950) was the tenth Prime
Minister of Canada from December    Rank:            10th
29, 1921 to June 28, 1926 September Date of Birth:   December 17, 1874
25, 1926 to August 7, 1930, and
October 23, 1935 to November 15,    Place of Birth:  Kitchener, Ontario
1948. He had the longest combined   Spouse:          never married
time in the Prime Minister position Profession:      lawyer
in British Commonwealth history.
His 22 years as prime minister may  Political Party: Liberal Party of Canada
be the all-time record for a freely
elected head of government.

Early Life

Mackenzie King was born in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener). A grandson of
William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the Upper Canada Rebellion in 1837, King
held five university degrees. He obtained three from the University of
Toronto: B.A. 1895, LL.B. 1896, and M.A. 1897. After studying at the
University of Chicago, Mackenzie King proceeded to Harvard, receiving an
M.A. Political Economy degree 1898 and a Ph.D. 1909.

He was first elected to Parliament as a Liberal in 1909. He lost his seat in
1911 and lost again in the election of 1917 due to his opposition to
conscription (a view not shared by the majority of English Canadians). In
1919 he was re-elected and became the leader of the Liberal Party, a
position he held until 1948. In the 1921 election his party defeated Arthur
Meighen and the Conservatives and he became Prime Minister.

The "King-Byng" Affair

In his first term as Prime Minister he was opposed by the Progressive Party,
who did not support trade tariffs. King called an election in 1925, in which
the Conservatives won the most seats, but as they did not have a majority in
the House of Commons King formed a government with the Progressives. Soon
into his term, however, anwhile King was involved in a bribery scandal in
the Ministry of Customs, which led to more support for the Conservatives and
Progressives and the possibility that King would be forced to resign. King
asked Governor General Lord Byng to dissolve Parliament and call another
election, but Byng refused, one of the rare times in Canadian history that
the Governor General has exercised such a power. As King no longer had a
majority in Parliament, there was technically no Prime Minister. Byng asked
Meighen to form a new government, but when Meighen called a new election in
1926 a short time later, King was re-elected and the Liberals returned to
power.

Depression and War

In his second term he introduced old-age pensions, but he lost the election
of 1930 to Richard Bedford Bennett. Unfortunately for Bennett, his
government was in power during the beginning of the Great Depression, and
King was re-elected once more in the 1935 election. The worst of the
Depression had passed, and King implemented relief programs such as the
National Housing Act and National Employment Commission, and also created
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1936 and Trans-Canada Airlines (the
precursor to Air Canada) in 1937.

King hoped an outbreak of war in the 1930s could be avoided. He had met with
Adolf Hitler and found him to be a reasonable man, working to improve his
country in the midst of the Depression. Fortunately for those opposed to
Nazi Germany, King realized the necessity of World War II when Hitler
invaded Poland in 1939, but unlike World War I when Canada was automatically
at war as soon as Britain joined, King asserted Canadian independence by
waiting until September 10 to declare war.

After the fall of France in 1940, Canada introduced conscription. However,
because many francophone Quebecers were opposed to what they saw as a
British war, only volunteers were to be sent overseas. King wanted to avoid
a second crisis if possible. By 1942, the military were pressing King hard
to send conscripts to Europe. In 1942 King held a national plebiscite on the
issue. Effectively, King was asking the nation at large to relieve him of
his commitment to Quebec. He fought the campaign on the motto of
"conscription if necessary, but not necessarily conscription." Not
surprisingly, Quebec was overwhelmingly opposed, but the majority of English
Canada supported it. For the next two years King tried to avoid the issue
with a massive campaign to recruit volunteers, despite heavy losses in the
Dieppe Raid in 1942, in Italy in 1943, and after the Battle of Normandy in
1944. At the end of 1944 he finally decided it was necessary to send
conscripts to Europe after all. This led to a brief political crisis (see
Conscription Crisis of 1944), but the war ended just a few months later.
None of these conscripts ever saw combat.

Post-War Canada

Mackenzie King won the election of 1945, and began to introduce social
programs such as unemployment insurance and universal health care. Although
considered a minor player in the war by United States President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (despite
hosting a wartime conference in Quebec City in 1943), King helped found the
United Nations in 1945. In 1948 he retired after 22 years as Prime Minister,
and was succeeded by Louis St. Laurent.

Personal Life

Mackenzie King was a cautious politician who tailored his policies to
prevailing opinions. "Parliament will decide," he liked to say when pressed
to act. Privately, he was highly eccentric with his preference for
consulting the spirit of his dead mother and his dog Pat for political
advice. He never married, but had a close female friend, Joan Patteson, a
married woman, with whom he spent much of his leisure time. His country
retreat at Kingsmere in Gatineau Park, Ottawa, is open to the public.

Mackenzie King died on July 22, 1950 at his home near Ottawa. He is buried
in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, Ontario. He is pictured on the Canadian
fifty-dollar bill.