Macdonald.

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

This novel, the author’s third, is about the last five months of Canada’s first prime minister’s life, almost all told in the present tense by Joseph Pope. Historically, Pope became Sir John A. Macdonald’s private secretary in 1878 and subsequently wrote volumes of biography of John A, so when the fictional Pope tells us in this book’s opening pages, “More and more my life has become his,” he rightly sets himself up as the best person to tell the story. Unfortunately, he is not the only narrator. About one sixth of the book is narrated by Macdonald, and those short chapters do not work as well—perhaps because it’s more comfortable to observe the man through the eyes of others than to be made privy to his innermost thoughts. On the other hand, these intervals are a way of giving stories of the great man from the years before he employed young Pope.

The book takes us from Sir John’s last election campaign, which left him appallingly weakened, to his death, and, in an epilogue, into the next century with his widow and daughter. Perhaps the best scenes are those in the House of Commons. Most are based on parliamentary records, but some incidents are inventions. Sir John’s tempestuous meeting with American President Grant is a fantasy that seems inspired by the 1965 incident when Lyndon Johnson grabbed Lester Pearson by the tie, pulled him from his chair, and shouted in his face. A late-night visit by Louis Riel to Macdonald’s home is another fabrication, albeit a more interesting one.

Unfortunately, the historical background to Macdonald’s last months is not one of great drama for Canada; it was an era of transition, as Wilfred Laurier waited in the wings to bring the country into a new century. One day, perhaps, we will have a fine historical epic that would involve us in Macdonald’s struggles over Confederation, and the tumult of the Pacific Scandal. Meanwhile, this book is a worthy effort. Fiction it may be, but as biographer P. B. Waite memorably observed of John A., “he was, and he is, tremendous company.”