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Overview
The image of the scrum -- a beleaguered politican surrounded by jockeying reporters -- is central to our perception of Ottawa. The modern scrum began with the arrival of television, but even in Sir John A. Macdonald's day, a century earlier, reporters in the parliamentary press gallery had waited outside the prime minister's office, pen in hand, hoping for a quote for the next edition.
The scrum represents the test of wills, the contest of wits, and the battle for control that have characterized the relationship between Canadian prime ministers and journalists for more than 125 years. Scrum Wars chronicles this relationship. It is an anecdotal as well as analytical account, showing how earlier prime ministers like Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier were able to exercise control over what was written about their administrators, while more recent leaders like John Diefenbaker, Joe Clark, John Turner, and Brian Mulroney often found themselves at the mercy of intense media scrutiny and comment.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459718593 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Dundurn Press |
| Publication date: | 08/08/1996 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 392 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Allan Levine received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Toronto in 1985. He is the author of The Exchange: 100 Years of Trading Grain in Winnipeg (1987) and the editor of Your Worship: The Lives of Eight of Canada's Most Unforgettable Mayors (1989). His review and articles have appeared in the Globe and Mail, the Winnipeg Free Press, Saturday Night, The Beaver, and Books in Canada. Since 1984, he has taught at St. John's-Ravenscourt School. He lives in Winnipeg with his wife, Angie, and their two children.
Allan Levine received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Toronto in 1985. He authored The Exchange: 100 Years of Trading Grain in Winnipeg edited Your Worship: The Lives of Eight of Canada's Most Unforgettable Mayors. His review and articles have appeared in the Globe&Mail, Winnipeg Free Press, Saturday Night, The Beaver, and Books in Canada. Since 1984 he has taught at St. John's-Ravenscourt School. He lives in Winnipeg.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
A Controlling Interest
I have been a good deal disappointed by the tone in which political warfare is conducted by the press. The terms in which you have been assailed quite exceed the license of electioneering language.
Lord Dufferin to John A. Macdonald, 1872
At the McGill University convocation in 1873, the governor general, Lord Dufferin, delivered a lengthy speech entirely in Greek. In attendance were John A. Macdonald and his French Canadian colleague Hector Langevin. On the train trip back to Ottawa, Langevin read a news report of the event which noted that Dufferin had spoken “the purest ancient Greek without mispronouncing a word.”
“Good Heavens,” said Langevin to Macdonald, “how did the reporter know that?”
“I told him,” replied Sir John.
“But you don’t know Greek!” exclaimed Langevin.
“True,” answered Macdonald, “but I know a little about politics.”1
Indeed he did. We like to think of Macdonald as being something of a charming and witty political genius. The truth was that he worked more diligently at the political game than any of his peers. While he had what is referred to today as a charismatic personality, his great success was due more to his ability “for managing other people,” as Lord Dufferin put it. He knew how to win over followers and keep them loyal. He treated backbenchers with the same respect accorded his cabinet ministers, could recall names of constituents he had not seen in five years, and “deemed no man beneath his notice.” “He never forgot,” John Willison wrote, “that popularity was power.”2
He could be devious, manipulative, even unscrupulous if it was necessary, although he was not corrupt. Apart from his exaggerated drinking problem, Macdonald is best remembered for the Pacific Scandal of 1873. It was alleged that he took money from Sir Hugh Allan in exchange for the contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), but this was probably more a case of foolishness and bad judgment than corruption. Those times dictated a different set of acceptable political rules than do current mores. It is often forgotten, for example, that there never would have been a Pacific Scandal had the Liberals not purchased stolen and incriminating documents for $5,000.
Such were the realities of political life in late nineteenth-century Canada. As a practical man, Macdonald accepted this; he also understood how to operate within the defined boundaries. Nothing illustrates this point more than his relationship with the press. Over more than a forty-year period, this was the arena in which Macdonald’s best and worst qualities as a politician were utilized, refined, and tested.
In 1885 Macdonald’s parliamentary office received thirty-seven daily and weekly newspapers from across the country. He read the major Montreal and Toronto papers each day, most often at bedtime, and later his secretaries prepared clippings for him to peruse. Even on his rare holidays he voraciously scanned the editorial pages. More importantly, he kept in close touch with most of the Conservative newspaper publishers in the Dominion, both large and small. He advised them what lines to take on policy, stroked their egos, and sometimes assured them that needed patronage was forthcoming.
No matter how trivial an issue, Macdonald refused to miss an opportunity to score a political point. The examples abound in his voluminous correspondence. As journalist Jeffrey Simpson has pointed out, Macdonald’s letters “brim with attention to a thousand details of politics.” In December 1868 he sent Daniel Morrison, the editor of the Conservative Daily Telegraph in Toronto, an article he had received from a Halifax Liberal paper that was critical of his rival George Brown. Nova Scotia Grits had never forgiven Brown for not consulting them before he joined the “Great Coalition” with Macdonald and Cartier in 1864 that led to Confederation. The article in question, Macdonald told Morrison, “pitches into Brown … I leave [it] for your manipulation.”3
Less than two years later he wrote to Morrison again, this time explaining at length why the aging Francis Hincks, who had returned after fifteen years from his retreat as governor of Barbados and British Guiana to join Macdonald’s cabinet, had publicly attacked the Telegraph, a Conservative booster. Apparently Hincks had taken exception to comments made by one of the newspaper’s reporters. Macdonald conceded that it was a misunderstanding and then proceeded to tell Morrison – in a way only he could get away with – how appreciative he was of the Telegraph’s contribution to the Tory cause. He acknowledged that the newspaper should not be regarded as merely “a mouthpiece of a government” and that its influence depended on it “being supposed to speak its real sentiments.” Macdonald suggested that Morrison send a correspondent to Ottawa whom he could confide in from time to time. “It might add to the interest of your paper,” the prime minister noted. “However, you as a newspaper man know more about this kind of thing than I do.”4
In fact, Macdonald knew a great deal more about newspapers than he was willing to admit. By 1871 he had been the Dominion’s prime minister for four years and an active politician for twenty-eight. In the historic road he had travelled from his position as Kingston’s member in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada, through his participation in the debates over Confederation in the early 1860s, to his role as the new Dominion’s first leader in 1867, Macdonald had received the best political education anyone would want. And from the day in April 1844 when the Kingston Herald published his first real political declaration, he was conscious of a newspaper’s tremendous impact.5 He also witnessed the rise of his opponent George Brown and the Liberals, assisted in no small way by the Toronto Globe, the most influential political organ of its time and for years to come. Using and manipulating the press to his own advantage became a part of Macdonald’s political arsenal.
This was certainly the case during the 1871 negotiations with the United States over the Washington Treaty, one of the most serious issues Macdonald faced in his first term in office. Though the British still controlled Canada’s foreign relations at this time, Prime Minister Macdonald was invited, in accordance with proper diplomatic etiquette, to join the British delegation in Washington during discussions about U.S.-Canada trade, fishing rights, and other issues still unsettled from the American Civil War years. (The Canadian government believed, for instance, that the U.S. government owed it compensation for the damage done during raids on Canada conducted by Irish Fenians from U.S. bases back in 1866.) Reluctantly, Macdonald left Ottawa for the American capital at the end of February 1871 and remained there for three long months. He was all too aware that he was regarded by the other members of the British negotiating team as a colonial inferior. He realized as well that the imperial government, desperate to establish friendly relations with the United States, would have no qualms about sacrificing Canadian interests to gain American favour. He was not disappointed.6
After months of dreary meetings and evenings spent socializing at Washington dinner parties, the Americans offered a cash payment for the use of Canadian fishing waters, a rather radical proposition, with no comprehensive reciprocal trade agreement as desired by Macdonald. By the time it was all over at the end of April, the British had bowed to the Americans’ unfavourable terms. They had sold fishing rights in Canada without the Dominion’s consent or approval.7
A frustrated Macdonald confided to Alexander Morris, one of his cabinet ministers: “Never in the whole course of my public life have I been in so disagreeable a position.”8 He was dejected, but not yet defeated. His strategy now revolved around whether to sign the treaty. He decided it would be best in the interests of the Empire to add his signature, but he did write formal letters to the British government noting his objections. These would be helpful later on.
His first general election as prime minister was about a year away. He knew that Brown and the Globe as well as other Liberal newspapers would attack him as a traitor. Controlling information about his position on the treaty therefore became essential. He instructed Morris “to make arrangements with the friendly newspapers … to hold back, if possible, any expression of opinion on the Treaty when it is promulgated, until the Globe commits itself against the Treaty.” The idea was that Brown and the Grits would think Macdonald supported the treaty and would criticize him accordingly, and then Macdonald could reveal that he too objected to it. He and Brown would be on the same side of the issue and the treaty would be forgotten by the time the election campaign began. If, however, he confirmed his opposition immediately, he feared that Brown would find some way to support it.9 It was a shrewd manoeuvre by an experienced politician, and it worked.
As Macdonald anticipated, the Globe tore into the treaty and branded the prime minister a weak traitor. “Sir John Macdonald is but a poor parody of a statesman after all,” declared a Globe editorial on May 31. “Neither in his personal or political character has he ever shown moral or intellectual strength. He is smart and cunning but has more than once before now proved himself to be ‘too clever by half.’ At Washington he found not subservient tools, but men of infinitely superior calibre to himself and the natural weakness of his character appeared.” Such was the colourful language of 1871 editorials.
The loyal Conservative press was placed in a more difficult position because Macdonald had decided the best course to follow was silence. Amazingly, for twelve very long months he refused to comment; nor did he accept any invitations to speak at political gatherings, fearing that he would have to explain his treaty position.10 But the Tory press adhered to its leader’s wishes. Despite the Globe’s, daily abuse, the Brantford Courier defended Macdonald’s actions against the aggressive “Yankees,” while future prime minister Mackenzie Bowell’s Belleville Intelligencer argued that no opinion could be made about the treaty until Parliament debated it.
Eventually the British government came up with a guaranteed loan of £2.5 million for railways and canals in exchange for the Canadian Parliament’s ratification. Macdonald finally spoke on the issue in a two and a half hour speech on May 3, 1872. He played up his role in assisting both Anglo-American peace and the interests of the Empire.11 Thanks in large part to his ability to manipulate and slant the news, he turned a potential disaster into a triumph and beat Brown and the Globe – in this round at least.
George Brown was a large man, over six feet tall and powerfully built. Even by age thirty-five, he was balding and wore long, bushy, mutton-chop sideburns, as was the style of the day. He was a hard, dogmatic, and passionate man with strong beliefs about the freedom of religion, free speech, civil liberties, and the separation of church and state.12 Moreover, he was willing to fight for these ideas, no matter what the cost. He feared the power of the Catholic Church and resented how his French and English Conservative opponents, Macdonald and Cartier, had expanded the church’s power in the schools of Canada West. From the day in 1844 when he founded the Globe in Toronto, Brown became a major player in the political life of the country by establishing what proved to be one of the foundations of a lasting Liberal Party. He also set the standards by which all other newspapers and journalists were judged.
As a pioneer of the Canadian newspaper industry, Brown ensured that the Globe always had the most innovative machinery. It allowed him and his brother Gordon (who was appointed managing editor in 1853) to refine and transform the paper from a “mammoth blanket sheet” folded once to make four pages of thirty-six columns to a smaller eight-page version resembling the newspapers of today. The Browns experimented with new and clearer type, sent correspondents all over the country to cover stories, reported foreign as well as local news, and attracted large audiences in Toronto as well as in nearby towns with serialized literature and stories about sensational murder trials. This plus the Globe’s “ferocious editorials,” in which Brown and his writers “struck without mercy against the foes of Reform,” made the newspaper a powerful weapon.13
No newspaper was referred to in House of Commons debates more than the Globe; nor was one more widely read. It was said that before many Liberal politicians would speak on an issue, they would ask, “What will the Globe say?” It was sold in every train station, hotel, and bookstore in Ontario. Its denunciations and strong opinions were a daily topic of conversation. As veteran Liberal politician Sir Richard Cartwright so aptly put it, “There were probably many thousand voters in Ontario … who hardly read anything except their Globe and their Bible.”14
For more than five decades, the Globe’s main target was John A. Macdonald, the Tory devil incarnate. No two men were as different in style and personality than Macdonald and Brown. Where Macdonald was easygoing, generally cheerful and good-natured, Brown was less accommodating, more strenuous and serious. That they clashed is not at all surprising.15
The root of their long feud stemmed from an incident in pre-Confederation days when they were both members from Canada West. In a violent outburst in 1856, Macdonald unfairly accused Brown of lying and falsifying evidence in his capacity as secretary of a major commission on conditions at Kingston Penitentiary that had reported in 1849.16 Unlike Macdonald, who rarely held a grudge, Brown did, and in his opinion Macdonald never publicly apologized for his vicious remarks. Brown remained bitter about this for the rest of his life and it coloured his view of John A. and his political methods.
As for Macdonald, his personal feelings towards Brown were reflected in one of his most quoted remarks: that Canadians “would rather have John A. drunk than George Brown sober.” Still, the Globe – the ‘Grit Organ’ as it was commonly referred to by Conservatives – could drive Macdonald to drink, and probably did on more than one occasion. He read it daily and had an army of newspaper publishers and supporters who kept him up to date on its most recent attacks.
For Macdonald, taking on the Globe was sometimes the best sport in town. When he was in Toronto, he stayed at the Queen’s Hotel, where he would hold court in the Red Parlour. Usually camped outside the Queen’s was the Globe’s Herbert Burrows, assigned to spy and report on Macdonald’s activities. Burrows did anything for a scoop. In 1881 the Conservatives held a convention in Toronto at the Grand Opera House, and the Globe was not invited. This didn’t stop Burrows. He paid off an Opera House employee and perched high above the stage, where he remained all day, taking notes. He was thus able to write an in-depth story, much to the anger of the local Tories. Macdonald admired Burrows so much that he later got him a job with the Toronto Empire, the Conservative Party organ in the late 1880s.17
More often, John A. received harsh and critical treatment by Globe writers, representative of the journalistic style of the era. He was condemned for his handling of Louis Riel and the Métis conflict in 1869 and for selling out Canada in the Washington Treaty of 1871. But in early April 1873, when Liberal Lucius Seth Huntington first raised the charges that Macdonald had awarded the Pacific Railway contract for a bribe, breaking the scandal that would ultimately cause the Conservatives’ fall, the Globe’s vindictive and predatory character reached new heights.
From this point on, the newspaper hammered away at the government’s corruption. Outraged, the Globe produced each new piece of the devastating puzzle, disclosing how Hugh Allan had been promised the presidency of the new railway and how desperately the Conservatives had needed Allan’s “dirty” money during the election of 1872. “Immediate, private. I must have another ten thousand. Will be the last time of calling. Do not fail me. Answer today,” Macdonald had wired Allan’s lawyer J.J. Abbott on August 26, 1872, near the end of the election. This plea for help, boldly published by the Globe and other Liberal papers on July 18, 1873, sealed Macdonald’s fate.
Throughout the ordeal the Globe took the moral high ground. “Shall the highest servants of the nation, the chosen advisors of the Crown be suffered to maintain their position by selling the public interests and public lands for gold and pandering to the lowest and most sordid motives?” pondered an editorial on October 21. Macdonald finally resigned in early November but defended his position in a five-hour speech in Parliament. To the Globe this was “callous and repulsive.” In words that today would be cause for a libel suit, the newspaper portrayed Macdonald as “the Hector of corruption” who “defied all the principles of right and justice, every dictate of morality, every sanction of conscience, every prescription of decency which belongs to the people of Canada.”18 Brown’s close associate, supporter, and friend, Alexander Mackenzie, became prime minister upon Macdonald’s departure. Historians have not treated Mackenzie as a figure of much consequence. The truth is that John A. was a hard act to follow, although the diligent and honest Mackenzie, a former stonemason, would not have concerned himself with such matters. He accepted his party’s call (no one else wanted the job) and with the help of Brown and the Globe faced the challenges of a depression and the indecisiveness of Edward Blake (who resigned twice from the cabinet).
Governor General Lord Dufferin referred to George Brown, appointed a senator in December 1873, as “the protector of my prime minister.”19 Every prime minister needs a confidant, someone trustworthy who will provide advice when needed. For Mackenzie this was Brown, his fellow-Scot and leader. It would be wrong to say Mackenzie worshipped Brown, but he did value his friendship and newspaper. On the other hand, he wasn’t afraid to speak out when he thought the Globe was following the wrong course.20 The Globe could not save Mackenzie from a resurging John A. Macdonald in 1878, but it was not for lack of trying.
April 12, 1878, was a Friday. In the House of Commons a debate was raging over the actions of Quebec Lieutenant-Governor Letellier de St. Just, who had dismissed his Conservative ministers. Macdonald, then leader of the opposition, wanted the debate to resume the following day; Prime Minister Mackenzie, impatient to be done with the issue, would not grant the requested adjournment; and thus the debate continued through the night, lasting until 6 p.m. on Saturday. In an act of defiance, the Conservatives used a variety of tactics to keep the discussion going. In fact, it was mayhem. Recalled journalist E.B. Biggar: “While the points of order were being argued members hammered at desks, blew on tin trumpets, imitated the crowing of cocks, sent up toy balloons, threw sand crackers or torpedoes and occasionally hurled blue books across the House.”21
There were two different accounts of John A. Macdonald’s conduct that night. According to his sympathetic biographer Donald Creighton, Macdonald, after leading the attack late into Friday night, retired from the House, had a few glasses of sherry with some oysters, and went to sleep on a couch in a committee room. The Globe and Alexander Mackenzie saw it differently. “John A. got very drunk,” the prime minister informed George Brown, “and early this morning they had to get him stowed away somewhere … About six this morning he drank a tumbler full of sherry and at eight [Liberal M.P. David] Mills saw him drink a tumbler full of whisky. The last dose laid him out and his friends hid him somewhere.”22
The Globe’s correspondent in the gallery wrote a damaging story for Monday’s edition, and an editorial entitled “The Disgraceful Scene in Ottawa” followed the next day: “To say that Sir John Macdonald was on Friday night somewhat under the influence of liquor would be a grossly inadequate representation of fact. He was simply drunk in the plain ordinary sense of the word.” The Globe’s interpretation of the events spread across Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes and was retold and published by Grit editors eager to join the slanderous attack. From every little Liberal printing press, John A. was denounced as the devil, as dishonest, and as a drunk.23
Conservative papers, of course, rallied to their leader’s side, while Macdonald himself ordered his lawyers to begin $10,000 libel suits against the Guelph Mercury, Brantford Expositor, and Peterborough Examiner. It is not clear whether a suit was also launched against the Globe, although Macdonald was encouraged to do so. The cases were to begin in October but were all dropped after the Conservatives were back in office.24 Still, until the day he died in 1891 – a decade after his nemesis George Brown had suffered a similar fate (caused from a wound sustained from an assassination attempt) – there was no greater thorn in Macdonald’s side than the Globe. The problem of combatting its influence and power took up more of his valuable time than he surely desired. It wasn’t that Macdonald was not concerned about the rest of Canada; Joseph Howe, Louis Riel, Honoré Mercier, and Thomas Greenway, among others, made sure of that. Yet during his career it was his home province of Ontario, where the roots of his legal, business and political profession were, that most concerned him. He spent the majority of his time in three Ontario cities, Ottawa, Toronto, and Kingston. It was not until he was seventy-one, in 1886, that he actually visited a Canadian region west of Ontario. He was a smart enough leader to realize that the inner political workings of Quebec and the Maritimes should be left with Cartier, Langevin, and Tupper, who understood the local dynamics of their communities. Ontario, with its eighty-two seats (ninety-two by 1891), was his territory. He was, as one writer observed, “an Ontario institution.”
Macdonald did try to establish a network of viable Conservative newspapers across the Dominion. He appreciated, for instance, the support of the Montreal Gazette and the Quebec City Chronicle, his two main English papers in Quebec, and worried about the financial problems faced by the French Montreal daily La Minerve. He spent a decade assisting his Winnipeg supporters in their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to start a Conservative paper that would challenge the supremacy of the Liberal-leaning Free Press. Further west in Regina, he put out a call for capital to finance the founding of the Leader by Nicholas Flood Davin in 1883.25 Nevertheless, because of Macdonald’s own interests, political and personal, as well as the overwhelming influence of the Globe, it was the press situation in Ontario, more particularly Toronto, that mattered most.
Toronto at the time of Confederation was no longer “muddy little York”; it was not, however, the metropolis it is today. It was still a distant second behind Montreal as the dominating Canadian urban centre of business and culture, but it was growing. In 1871 its population was a little more than 56,000; within a decade it would rise to 86,000 and at the end of the Macdonald era in 1891 to 181,000. Toronto was in every respect a Protestant city: hard work, Christian values, and loyalty to Britain were its trademarks.26 The wealthy played cricket and golf at the fashionable clubs, while labour leaders tried to reduce the average working day from ten hours to nine.
King Street was the social and business centre, although in 1869 Timothy Eaton had opened his store a few blocks north at the corner of Queen and Yonge. At Eaton’s, it was cash only and the prices to be paid were as marked. There was no credit and no dickering, a radical departure from the way business was usually conducted. Torontonians soon learned to adapt to and even like the new ways. If you enjoyed sports, you could cheer on champion rower Ned Hanlan down by Lake Ontario or watch the Clipper baseball team practise in Queen’s Park. There were outings to High Park (about the only place you could not drink), the highlight there being the fireworks display on Queen Victoria’s birthday, and visits to the annual summer exhibition, where a dazzling display on electricity was staged in 1882. For the Liberals there was the Globe and the National Club. Conservative businessmen and lawyers preferred the confines of the Albany Club; what newspaper they read, however, varied from year to year.
The main reason Macdonald and the Conservatives had so much trouble establishing a legitimate contender to the Globe was that there was no Tory version of George Brown. The Globe publisher nurtured his sheet, giving it a vision and a personality. Ultimately the task of challenging the Grit paper became the responsibility of Macdonald and his most trusted advisers. Macdonald, as prime minister, had quite different priorities from Brown, who by 1867 was a newspaper proprietor first and a politician second, and herein lay the root of the problem. Besides a publisher, a successful party organ required a full-time competent team of dedicated editors, reporters, printers, and business managers. Brown had brought them all together; Macdonald was forever trying to find the right combination.
Until 1872 Macdonald was supported in Toronto first by the Leader and later by the Daily Telegraph. But both failed him. The Leader had been founded by James Beaty, a Toronto leather merchant, in 1852. Beaty was a supporter of Francis Hincks, and his paper, which was edited by Charles Lindsay (the son-in-law of rebel William Lyon Mackenzie), reflected Hincks’s moderate tone, a fact that troubled Macdonald.
In those days, during the time of the union of the Canadas, the British Colonist, a Tory paper that dated back to the 1830s, also assisted Macdonald, although Macdonald’s control was limited. In fact, in 1858 a disagreement between Macdonald and the Colonist over its fair treatment of George Brown’s father, Peter (who had been unjustly charged by a Conservative member of the assembly with embezzling funds in Scotland years earlier), had led the prime minister to sponsor a paper called the Toronto Daily Atlas. It lasted only a short time before being taken over by the Colonist, which was eventually itself absorbed by Beaty and the Leader.27
Despite its acceptable service to the Conservative cause, the Leader could not keep up with the Globe in circulation or technological improvement. As David Macpherson, a prominent Toronto Conservative businessman, told Macdonald, who was in London watching the passage of the British North America (BNA) Act in February 1867, “The Globe is so much improved as a newspaper and the Leader so fallen off.” The situation had not improved a year later. “How I wish your paper was in Toronto,” Macdonald wrote in a letter to Thomas White, then publisher of the Hamilton Spectator. “I feel absolutely powerless there for want of an organ. The Leader is effete.” Plans were arranged for White to relocate to Toronto, but the $10,000 needed for the move could not be raised. Macdonald and Macpherson then attempted to buy out Beaty, hoping to change the Leader’s tone and style by installing White as the new managing editor. This too did not work out. The eccentric Beaty, as Macdonald later admitted, had “an exaggerated value” of his paper and, besides, enjoyed having it as a “toy to play with.”28
Next was the case of the Daily Telegraph. Established in 1866 by James Cook (formerly of the Leader) and John Ross Robertson (once the Globe’s city editor) the Telegraph started out as an independent Conservative paper. Cook and Robertson favoured the British connection, Confederation, free trade, and John A. Macdonald. They also felt free to criticize any or all of these, a situation unacceptable to a politician like Macdonald, who needed daily partisan press coverage and editorials he could count on. Cook and Robertson were joined in the summer of 1868 by Daniel Morrison, an experienced journalist who had previously worked for the Colonist, the Leader, the Morning Chronicle (the Conservative paper in Quebec City), and most recently the New York Times. He returned to Canada at about the time the Telegraph was experiencing serious financial difficulties and within six months set out with Cook to raise the needed funds. Robertson, who did not want to owe anyone, especially politicians, favours, remained behind in Toronto, frustrated and angry.
During March 1869 Morrison and Cook presented Macdonald with their plans for a revised Telegraph that could compete more effectively with the Globe. They also met with Charles Brydges, the manager of the Grand Trunk Railroad and an associate of Macdonald’s. Brydges did not hold either the Telegraph or Morrison (he had told Macdonald he was “certainly not sober when I saw him”) in the highest regard. Nevertheless, in April Macdonald and Brydges arranged for $5,000 to be given to the Telegraph as a mortgage, and promised another $5,000 if the paper became as successful as Morrison and Cook claimed.29*
Even with Morrison as editor the Telegraph faltered. Then on April 12, 1870, Morrison died suddenly at the age of forty-three, and the Telegraph was returned to Robertson’s hands. During the next year and half, much to Macdonald’s displeasure, Robertson wrote critical editorials on the government’s handling of the Riel crisis at Red River; further, his paper considered the Washington Treaty, as the Globe did, a betrayal of Canada. On 11 May 1871, the Telegraph accused the Macdonald administration of being “worn out political hacks of every shade of political views, without one common idea, save that of retaining power and place, by sacrificing every principle and every particle of honour.” These were not the words of a party organ, nor it seemed of a financially viable newspaper. By attacking the government, Robertson was moving into the Globe’s territory, but there was not enough room for both in partisan Toronto. That May the Telegraph’s debt reached roughly $50,000.30
Robertson wasn’t finished yet. He bought out his original partner, James Cook, for $3,000 and continued on his tenuous course. With an election fast approaching, Macdonald was getting desperate. The obvious thing to do was to appease Robertson and take control of the Telegraph. Starting a new paper was just not practical. While Conservative politician John Carling from Ontario believed Macdonald could “manage” Robertson, the prime minister was doubtful. He had been secretly kept informed of Robertson’s activities by George Kingsmill of the Telegraph staff and was aware of the editor’s principled position regarding his independence. No, the only route, Macdonald determined, was to buy out Robertson, his printing plant, and his valuable subscription list and quickly start a revised version of the Telegraph under an editor he could trust.31
Robertson was approached by David Macpherson, on Macdonald’s behalf, and offered $20,000. This was declined by both Robertson and the paper’s creditors. As the Conservatives planned their next move, an unknown financier named Ross bailed out Robertson with a $30,000 gift. This allowed Robertson to turn his venomous pen on Macdonald in a way that must have made his old boss George Brown proud. On March 11, 1872, the Telegraph editorial claimed that the paper “is not now and never has been the organ of Sir John A. Macdonald.” This was followed by a harsh attack on May 6 labelling the prime minister and his Toronto friends a “perfidious ring” for trying to drive the Telegraph out of business. “Every vile perversion that the narrow intellects of the scurvy informers employed and directed by the chief trickster from his room at the Queen’s could devise was blazoned wherever venom was calculated to penetrate.”32 Such were the words that made John Ross Robertson famous in the annals of Canadian journalism.* Macdonald had realized as early as January that the Telegraph was a lost cause and clearly no Conservative answer to the Globe. He and his supporters now faced the challenge of establishing a new Toronto newspaper, one that would proudly carry the Tory banner.
*In his unpublished history of the Globe, M.O. Hammond claimed that Macdonald and the Conservative Party had given the Telegraph $50,000. But the evidence in Macdonald’s correspondence suggests that he had put in $2,000; John Sandfield Macdonald, then the premier of Ontario, $1,000; and Brydges, $2,000. Whether or not larger contributions were made by Toronto Conservatives is not known.
*Robertson and the Telegraph were eventually forced out of business in October 1872 by the new Toronto Mail (see chapter 2). A bitter Robertson returned to the Globe, where he worked as a London, England, correspondent for two years. He later wrote for Goldwin Smith’s Nation. In 1876 he started the Toronto Evening Telegram, a sensational one-cent paper that appealed to the common man. In so doing, he became a pioneer of so-called popular or people’s journalism. (Rutherford, A Victorian Authority, 53–54) Note: See Bibliography for full publication details of footnote sources, if not otherwise provided.
Table of Contents
Preface: The Battle of the ScrumAcknowledgments
Prologue: The View from the Gallery
Illustrations (following page 104)
PART ONE
Partisan Partners, 1867–1913
1 A Controlling Interest
2 Party Organs
3 Laurier and the Globe
4 Under Liberal Management
5 Politics of Virtue
PART TWO
No League of Gentlemen, 1914–1956
6 Wartime Headlines
7 The Undependable Party Press
8 The Trials of Mackenzie King
9 R.B. in Charge
10 Managing the War
11 Uncle Louis
PART THREE
The Unofficial Opposition, 1957–1992
12 Dief vs. the Gallery
13 One of the Boys
14 The “Crummy” Press
15 Judgmental Journalism
16 The Turner Follies of ’84
17 Media Junkie
18 The Comeback Kid’s Last Ride
Notes
Bibliography
Index
What People are Saying About This
"Allan Levine's Scrum Wars documents our long history of slanted, manipulated political views. If journalism is 'the first rough draft of history,' it sort of makes you want to take another look at the final draft."