Public Triumph, Private Tragedy: The Double Life of John P Robarts

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

In 1986, four years after Ontario’s 17th premier died at age 65, Allan
K. McDougall published a biography of fellow Londoner John P. Robarts.
That volume was a distinguished addition to the Ontario Historical
Studies Series. As an official biography, however, it skirted
Robarts’s tempestuous private life, which included an unhappy marriage
to his first wife, Norah, who refused to leave London when Robarts
relocated to Toronto. Instead, she chose to raise two adopted children,
play bridge, and drink. Robarts himself was a man’s man who enjoyed
hunting, fishing, carousing, and womanizing but still managed to run
Ontario in a way that even now places him as one of the province’s
most effective premiers.

After leaving office in 1971, Robarts took up law and board work and
also continued offering his time to various public services. In 1973, he
divorced Norah and soon took up with Katherine Sickafuse, a divorced
American nurse some 28 years younger. His 1976 marriage to Katherine
scandalized his friends, who regarded her as a gold digger. After his
marriage, Robarts continued his privately destructive ways, wreaking
increasing havoc on his body. In 1981, he began suffering a series of
debilitating strokes and his once-happy marriage began to seriously
deteriorate. On October 18, 1982, he shot himself in the head (as had
his son Tim in 1977).

In 2001, Steve Paikin, co-host of TVOntario’s Studio 2, created a
documentary on Robarts’s life that aired to popular acclaim.
Encouraged by the former premier’s friends, he then transformed what
he had learned about Robarts into this fast-paced, readable biography,
which in lieu of references or endnotes includes a “Where Are They
Now?” section.

One can quibble about the book’s balance (Robarts’s second wife
cannot be too pleased with her portrayal), but not about the fact that
Public Triumph, Private Tragedy is clearly the best of the three books
Paikin has written so far.