LITMIR.BIZ

      William Lyon Mackenzie King, M.P. (North Waterloo, Ontario) and Minister of Labour, December 1910. A Windsor suit still hangs smartly at Laurier House, Ottawa, Ontario.

      Harper laughed, but this didn’t stop him from helping himself to another piece of chicken from the plate on the checkered picnic cloth. He lazily continued the conversation between mouthfuls. “You know what I mean, Rex. Europe, Harvard, all that! Any regrets about changing your mind and giving it up for a desk job in Ottawa?”

      “A desk job in Ottawa?” King exclaimed. “I am King of the desks!” He leapt up on a boulder and took a mock strongman stance. “I am editor of the Labor Gazette – produced, I may add, with the worthy Mr. Henry Albert Harper, my friend, colleague, and roommate. I am deputy minister of labour, the youngest deputy minister in the history of Canada. I have seen the groundwork I laid built into the Fair Wages Resolution Act, striking down the use of sweat shop labour for government contracts. I am now truly carrying on the work of my grandfather, able to influence those who might do something for the working classes!”

      “Hear, hear!” Harper encouraged, his brown eyes bright with glee.

      “Why,” King said pridefully, “if my spirit and my resolve stay strong, I may even enter public life. I am but twenty-six. One day,” he paused, looking at the grand vista before him, “should it be the will of the God of Bethel, I may be premier of this country.”

      Harper mumbled his approval through a mouthful of grapes.