The Governor General and the Prime Ministers: The Making and Unmaking of Governments

Graeme S. Mount is a professor of history at Laurentian University. He
is the author of Canada’s Enemies: Spies and Spying in the Peaceable
Kingdom, Chile and the Nazis, and The Diplomacy of War: The Case of
Korea.

The role of Canada’s governor general has been marginal since the
King–Byng episode of 1926, says McWhinney, but with minority
governments it may again become significant. To determine what a
governor general (GG) or lieutenant governor (LG) should do, McWhinney
has investigated precedents throughout the Commonwealth, and reviewed
the biographies of most governors general.

Many governors general made notable contributions; for example, Lord
John Buchan founded the Governor General’s Awards, Lord Stanley
donated hockey’s original Stanley Cup (the Dominion Hockey Challenge
Cup), and Lord Grey donated football’s Grey Cup.

GG Adrienne Clarkson was unfairly criticized for overspending on
overseas trips, when she was doing what the government had planned for
her; again for her work on preserving Rideau Hall, a national treasure;
and also for not attending the funeral of the lieutenant governor of
Alberta, even though the government had sent her to the inauguration of
the Ukrainian president. However, others had worse experiences. When
Rhodesians issued their Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965,
GG Sir Humphrey Gibbs lost his office and support staff. During a coup
in Grenada, GG Sir Paul Scoon and his wife lay on the floor to avoid
bullets; later they experienced house arrest. When John C. Bowen, LG of
Alberta, refused Royal Assent to three bills, the Aberhart government
deprived him of his residence, his secretary, his office, and his
official car. LGs of Quebec and British Columbia lived in firetraps;
although McWhinney does not mention it, Paul Comptois, an LG of Quebec,
died when his residence burned. Peter Hollingsworth, GG of Australia,
resigned after criticism that he had been extravagant when he redesigned
the residence so that distinguished visitors need not pass through his
bathroom in order to reach the reception room, and that he had been
negligent as Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane in his handling of a
pedophile priest before becoming governor general.

There are some minor errors. McWhinney dates the end of France’s
Fourth Republic as 1968 instead of 1958 and confuses events of the
Grenadian coups of 1979 and 1983. He underestimates the importance of
South Africa in explaining why Rhodesia’s Ian Smith capitulated to
outside pressure.