The Prime Ministers of Canada

Penny E. Bryden teaches history at Mount Allison University in New
Brunswick.

This lively introduction to the personalities and professional
accomplishments of each of Canada’s leaders, from Macdonald through
Chrétien, is the latest incarnation of a book that was first published
in 1969 as Fifteen Men. The prime ministers are portrayed as
multidimensional creatures in their private lives, while the dry
material of their political fortunes is animated through the use of
provocative anecdotes.

Some of the book’s emphases are questionable. Lester Pearson held
office for only five years, yet his biography is one of the longest.
Even more difficult to comprehend is why so much attention is given to
such long-forgotten scandals as the Rivard Affair and so little to the
introduction of social policies that continue to be part of political
debate in Canada today. Part

of the problem stems from the fact that the early chapters remain in
their 1969 form, despite the availability of new interpretations of the
leaders.

The Trudeau chapters suffer most with the reissues of the book,
probably because he was in power at the times when the book was
“updated.” His administrations are thus oddly chopped up in
Donaldson’s analysis, with the second administration, from 1980 to
1984, hidden in the chapter on Joe Clark, and scant attention paid to
the patriation of the new Constitution and the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms, an accomplishment many would consider Trudeau’s most
important. Strangely too, John Turner, Canada’s
second-shortest-serving prime minister, is given approximately the same
number of pages as Diefenbaker, and more than Laurier.

For those already familiar with the political history of Canada, there
is little new in this book; the general reader will find it a clear,
well-written introduction, however, and a useful reminder that politics
is always entertaining—at least in hindsight.