Clifford Sifton: Volume Two, A Lonely Eminence, 1901-1929

W.H. Heick is a professor of History at Wilfrid Laurier University.

Hall continues his evaluation of the public and private careers of Clifford Sifton from the turn of the century to his death in 1929. He maintains the standard of excellence achieved in the first volume.

There is a carryover from Volume I concerning the themes of Sifton’s administrative skills in party and government, in immigration promotion, and in Yukon government. To these are added concerns for a national all-Canadian transportation policy, views that differed from Laurier’s on the role of government and the nature of Canada, an evolution toward a central Canadian perspective on public policy, and a growing dissatisfaction with the unreformed political system combined with an inability to break away entirely from the patronage system of the past.

Clifford Sifton was one of the “principal disciples of progress in Canada” (p.78). Government had to play a dramatic leadership role, creating a favorable investment climate, so that private enterprise would operate in the public interest. Railway and immigration were the two best examples of a need for public policy. The philosophical gulf between Sifton and Laurier became steadily more evident. The Prime Minister was a mid-nineteenth century laissez-faire liberal who could be swayed by expediency.

The opinions of the two men were also poles apart in social thought. To Sifton, individuals were to be encouraged to use the country’s natural resources and, through competition, to generate a better life for everyone. The better life was to be lived in the context of a British heritage: a respect for tradition and the law, for cultural values, and for social obligations. Success would produce a society in Canada better even than that of the United States. Laurier’s lack of interest in generating a new society, as well as his appreciation of French Canada’s need for survival, left a disappointed Sifton.

In the area of external relations, Sifton’s involvement in the Alaska Boundary Tribunal generated a personal turning point. From a shallow position of appreciating the imperial tie (insofar as it enabled Canada to progress), he came to take a much more nationalistic point of view, seeing danger in the British connection and a need to stand up for Canadian needs against both the United Kingdom and the United States.

This half of the biography is, even more than the first, a study in the history of the Clifford Sifton/John Dafoe relationship as owner/editor of the Winnipeg Free Press. Mutual appreciation generated advantages for each man, and the Free Press became one of the most influential newspapers of its day.

In dealing with these various themes, Hall produces an intriguing picture of a man with driving energy, sharp analytical skills, and a combative and controversial nature. But also there is the private person: love of wife and family, and appreciation of horses and of travel. Lastly, there is the aging man with his increasing physical disabilities.