The Masques of Ottawa

Do not imagine that I spend much time at once in Ottawa. I have never liked the kind of play-house that politicians have made on that glorious plateau in a valley of wonderland...

Unless one is too easily mistaken, the Imperial Conference imparted a steady sense of responsibility to Arthur Meighen that he rather lacked when he took office. He found himsel...

But the fervour of the Hughes programme prevented the Premier from taking stock of the nation. He permitted Hughes to treat Quebec as an automatic part of Canada at war--which i...

At about the age of sixty a reaction came over Laurier; first noticeable in less enthusiasm and more reticence at the Imperial Conferences. The French-Canadian who had lost a se...

These are respectable facts; the only objection to which is that the full statement of the apologia occupies twelve pages of Hansard and must have taken at least two hours of Pa...

Low hill--General aspect, poplar bluffs, billowy landscape--Log and mudchink shack; pole and sod roof--stable and shed ditto--Three or four cattle and lashions of grass--Broncho...

All this was meat and drink to E. C. Drury, who came to voting age with the solemn conviction that though the fathers had worked hard, the sons were not prosperous. They paid to...

"Tell you what I want him for," he said. "I want to go up and shake hands with a real live man. That's what I want. I read his message 'bout getting together, and it sure set me...

Mr. White took into the Finance Department the atmosphere and the technique of the fiduciary corporation. Hence he was never able to read himself into the life of the country, n...

As an orator Mr. Rowell is remarkable in spite of two defects; no classical or humanities education except what he diligently dug out of books, and a very thin voice. Few public...

It would have needed a greater soul than Shaughnessy to be cynical about C.P.R. It often needed his latent Irish humour to appreciate the larger cynicism which it expressed conc...

Hughes was Minister of War, not a Minister of Defence. In the tramp of battalions down the street he felt Canada to be a young nation, not an overseas Dominion only. Yet the Fir...

"And on Sunday," said Max Aitken, eye-witness, "he had not abandoned his trenches. There were none left. They had been obliterated by the artillery. He withdrew his undefeated t...

In spite of Sir John, in 1919 and 1920, people bought Canada almost bankrupt on the exchanges. Hence among the items in the cheapening list may be placed the Canadian dollar whi...

Again, reconstructing enthusiasm followed him to Ottawa. He went there at the instigation of the Imperial Government. Whether he himself made the original suggestion of the need...

Beatty has not been at his new job long enough yet to prove what I suspect--that I was wrong. But he has been long enough with it to know that the surging ideals and aspirations...

"Sir Lomer," he said, "is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Province of Quebec. His chief duty is to go about inspecting and improving properties and to sit at directors...

Winnipeg seldom does things one half at a time. In the summer of 1917 J. W. Dafoe was one of the most astounded men in Canada. The other one was Sir Wilfrid Laurier. That was th...

"England is fighting this war wherever she sees the turban of a Turk or the helmet of a Teuton. She is fighting it in Egypt, Mesopotamia, in Macedonia, in Belgium--most of all i...

The Immigration Minister should be our leading sociologist. He should be able to diagnose communities. He might easily begin upon Ottawa. What a study a cross section of the Sma...

The debacle of Mackenzie railways was never contemplated by Mackenzie. He did not even imagine that it was possible--except that he was prophetically troubled by the ambition of...

And that is the story of Beaverbrook's tremendous contribution to winning the war. He secured most of the Labour Party, the Tories, and Carson for Lloyd George; without them the...