Survival of the Fattest: An Irreverent View of the Senate

Nicholas Pashley was a bookseller and a freelance writer and editor in Toronto.

Long a thorn in the side of Canadian political humbug, Larry Zolf is better qualified than most to write a study of the Canadian Senate that is at once intelligent and entertaining. Zolf himself claims to have been aspiring to a seat in the Red Chamber since his boyhood in wartime Winnipeg, a dream that appears to have grown no more likely of fulfillment over the years.

Still, a Senate that numbered Zolf among its members would be a brighter institution than our present assembly, described by Zolf as “the only museum in the world where all the artifacts, specimens, relies and fossils are alive — if barely breathing.” In this book he describes the history of the Canadian Senate, looks at its roles — both theoretical and actual — and examines a few of the men and women who have given it its bad name ( and occasionally a good name).

The ever-irreverent Zolf studies some of the scandals that have rocked the Senate (the absence of sex scandals he sadly attributes to the advancing years of most of the Upper Chamber’s inhabitants) and probes the connections between the Senate and big business, ties that are as strong today, he claims, as when the Senate was first established as a check upon the excesses of popular democracy. He examines as well the records of several Prime Ministers in terms of their Senate appointments, analysing their performances in the selection of native people, women, rural representatives, ethnic leaders, and party bagmen. (All Prime Ministers have excelled in this last category, but none better than Lester Pearson.) Trudeau gets credit for the most efficient, if not entirely uncynical, use of the Senate. Diefenbaker, on the other hand, once elevated the wrong man when his office thought he meant P.E.I. farmer Clem O’Leary instead of the powerful journalist Grattan O’Leary.

Zolf’s analysis of the careers of some of our better-known Senators is personal and frank, and his observation of backroom powers like Jim Coutts is not to be missed (the elevation of Peter Stollery earns a chapter of its own). He concludes that the various proposals for Senate reform are doomed to fail and suggests outright abolition (unless, of course, he can become a member).

This is a lively, entertaining, yet serious book at a great Canadian institution. Zolf says he wrote the book to inform, to amuse, to titillate, and, he hopes, to sell. Only his publisher knows if he has attained the last of his goals; there can be no question of the others.