William Lyon Mackenzie King

William Lyon Mackenzie King, twice former Prime Minister of Canada, was a brilliant tactician, was passionately committed to Canadian unity, and was a protector of the underdog, introducing such cornerstones of Canada’s social safety net as unemployment insurance, family allowances and old-age pensions. At the same time, he was insecure, craved flattery, became upset at minor criticism, and was prone to fantasy—especially about the Tory conspiracy against him. King loosened the Imperial connection with Britain and was wary of American military and economic power. Yet he loved all things British and acted like a praised schoolboy when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt treated him as an equal. This first major biography of Mackenzie King in 30 years mines the pages of his remarkable diary, at 30,000 pages one of the most significant and revealing political documents in Canada’s history and a guide to the deep and often moving inner conflicts that haunted Mackenzie King. With animated prose and a subtle wit, Allan Levine draws a multidimensional portrait of this most compelling of politicians.

Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was Canada’s tenth and longest serving prime minister and an important figure on the international scene, especially during the Second World War. This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of Mackenzie King.

When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King's death, the public was bombarded with stories about "Weird Willie," the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King's character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives. Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King's diary and details the specific decisions of King's literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King's diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King's diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation. Presenting extensive archival research in a captivating narrative, Unbuttoned traces the rise of a political culture that privileged the individual as the ultimate source of truth, and made Canadians rethink what they wanted to know about politicians.

Advance Praise for King "Here we have Allan Levine, one of the aces of Canadian historical chronicles, channelling Mackenzie King. And what a story they have to tell: our longest-serving prime minister, getting advice from his dog and having two-way conversations with his long-dead mother. If Canadian history was ever dull, it isn't now. Get this book." Book jacket.

William Lyon Mackenzie King served all of Canada as Prime Minister. He was Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister and for all other Commonwealth countries, too. His successive governments created the Canadian Welfare state and the place we once held in the world. King strove for the social cushion of a united, autonomous and prosperous country. A lifetime later all Canadians still benefit from his initiative and skill. King’s life followed the Social Gospel in the political world and in the pioneering study of industrial relations. His work, relatives and friends; successes and disappointments, are presented as you have never encountered them before.

A shrewd politician whose private life was one of bizzare and obsessive drives, sex life, love affairs, seances.

Aided by meticulous knowledge of the former Prime Minister's diary, and with characteristic conciseness and clarity, H. Blair Neatby has written the impressive and long-awaited third volume of the official biography of Mackenzie King. He carefully and judiciously untangles a complexity of issues in Canadian political history to produce definitive accounts of controversies that have engaged the attention of Canadian historians for years. Beginning the story in 1932, this volume treats the depression years when King was first in Opposition and then the years after 1935 when he was once again Prime Minister; it is a masterly analysis of how one of the most enigmatic figures in Canadian history made shrewd and critical political decisions. Attention is paid in turn to his clearly successful tactics as Leader of the Opposition; the election campaign of 1935; a wide range of his domestic policies, including those on unemployment, inflation, relief, and trade; and to a series of international crises – the Ethiopian crisis, the Spanish Civil War, Anschluss, and Munich – that culminated in the Second World War. At all times, King's overriding concern was to preserve national unity at home and to avoid commitments abroad, either through the British Commonwealth or the League of Nations. We see King in his relations with other Canadian leaders – Aberhart, Pattullo, Hepburn, Duplessis, and Bennett – and with world leaders – Roosevelt, Baldwin, Chamberlain, and Hitler. We also see the personal side of the man, and the link between the private and the public figure. William Lyon Mackenzie King, Volume III is an accomplished piece of historical writing; progressing in a controlled way through a profusion of incident and accident, it brings to completion the outstanding biography of a consummate politician.