LITMIR.BIZ

      William Thomas Diefenbaker, John’s father, was born in Ontario and never intended to move west. He was a short man, with a friendly face and well-trimmed mustache and the wide-eyed look of a dreamer. He also loved books and trained in Ottawa to be a teacher. His second love was politics: he spent his spare time in the House of Commons gallery watching the Canadian government in action. John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, was serving his last year in office. An election was brewing and William heard many grand speeches. “The House of Commons lived for him,” John Diefenbaker later explained, “and it lived for me when I heard him recount the events he had witnessed and stories of the parliamentary personalities he had seen.”

      William began his life as a teacher and, oddly enough, one of his students was a boy named Mackenzie King, who would one day become prime minister. In 1894 William Diefenbaker married Mary Bannerman, a strong-willed, straight-backed woman of Scottish descent who was a devout Baptist.

      On the 18th of September, 1895, their first son was born: John George Diefenbaker. He had clear blue eyes and soon grew an unruly mop of blonde hair (it would darken as he aged). He was a lad stuffed full of questions, eager to know everything. He could be a precocious little devil too. He enjoyed watching aristocrats from Toronto, out for a Sunday drive, pass by his home town in their newfangled electric cars. Whenever one of the untrustworthy vehicles broke down, leaving the rich men and women stuck kilometres from home in their best clothes, John would dash up and taunt them with questions like, “Do you think it will ever start again?” This led to the men yelling and stamping their feet while John ran giggling away.

      Lucky for John he was not alone in his youthful adventures. His brother, Elmer, was born in 1897. Elmer was an outgoing and happy-go-lucky child, the perfect sidekick. Diefenbaker later wrote, “Our relationship over the years approached that often described but seldom encountered ideal.” In other words, they were brothers and friends.

      But John had a serious side as a child too. He became acquainted with black boys who were often badly treated by others. Even at this early age John said, “The idea of the poor being treated differently, the working man being looked down upon as a digit, filled me with revulsion.”

      John’s idyllic childhood was interrupted by bad news: TB. In the spring of 1903 William was diagnosed with Galloping Consumption, a type of tuberculosis that affected both lungs. He was advised to seek the healthy benefits of the dry prairie climate. William immediately secured a position in what was then part of the North-West Territories, but is today known as Saskatchewan.

      When the relatives found out the Diefenbakers were leaving Ontario to live in the sticks, Mary’s brother said, “What’s the matter with you? Going to that awful country where there’s nothing but bears and Indians – they’ll kill you!” This was exactly the wrong thing to say. Mary Diefenbaker, never one to back down once a decision was made, announced they were going to go no matter what.

      The Canadian prairie was still a land of homesteads and opportunities, and the trains were packed with immigrants of all nationalities hoping to get a piece of prairie farmland and make a life for themselves. The Diefenbakers could only afford colonist class, with no sleeping accommodations and no dining car. Mary had prepared for this by sending blankets and food early to the train with William, but unfortunately a railway official gave William bad directions and he stored the supplies on the wrong train. The Diefenbakers got by with the help of fellow passengers who shared their food and blankets. At night, the boys slept tied to a wooden shelf on the wall so they wouldn’t fall out.

      The cramped quarters and constant jostling got on William’s nerves. Part way to the Prairies, he announced they were returning to Ontario.

      Mary narrowed her eyes. “We started out and we’re going on!” she said.

      William insisted he’d go back on his own if he had to.

      “If you do, the rest of us will carry on and you’ll come out sooner or later.”

      William finally agreed she was right. This wouldn’t be the last argument he lost to Mary. “Well, you know,” he would often say, “Mary is always right. Sometimes I don’t think so at the time, but it always turns out to be the proper course to take.”

      That course took them out of the trees and rocky land of the Canadian Shield and into the level prairie landscape. They went through Winnipeg and Regina, then headed northwest to Saskatoon (which only had a population of five hundred at the time) and finally stepped off the train in the town of Rosthern. After a two-night rest in the Queen’s Hotel, the Diefenbakers loaded their possessions into a wagon and bumped across the old prairie trails, steering around coulees lined with trees and fields of golden wheat. Finally, the Diefenbakers arrived at their destination: Tiefengrund school.

      The Diefenbakers were now thousands of kilometres from their relatives in Eastern Canada. They didn’t know a soul, but that changed quickly because their living quarters were attached to the schoolhouse, which was also a community meeting place. Gabriel Dumont would drop in or sometimes members of the North West Mounted Police stopped, including the very officers who’d fought against Dumont. In fact, Sergeant Pook, a regular visitor who liked Mary Diefenbaker’s cooking, told tales of how enemy bullets twice tore through his clothing during the rebellion without hitting him. These stories stuck with John his whole life and gave him a pride in the Mounted Police that never faded. People from

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