Portraits from a Life

D.M.L. Farr is professor emeritus of history at Carleton University in
Ottawa and the editor of Life and Letters of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Heward Grafftey is not a political figure of the first rank, and this is
not a conventional memoir. Instead, it is a series of portraits of
people Grafftey has known, a book that draws its inspiration from
Tennyson’s celebrated line “I am a part of all that I have met.”
Grafftey loves to tell a good story, and there are plenty of them in
this book; but readers who want a record of Grafftey’s life or even of
his political career will have to look elsewhere. The focus is on
others, so that the record of Grafftey’s activities is somewhat
blurred. Suffice it to say that Heward Grafftey was elected for
Brome-Mississiquo in the Eastern Townships of Quebec in the Diefenbaker
electoral triumph of 1958. He went on to hold the riding, a largely
francophone one, through the next six general elections. This is, in
itself, a considerable achievement. He served in lesser cabinet posts
under John Diefenbaker and Joe Clark. A strong crusading interest, which
is touched on many times in Portraits from a Life, is a concern for
personal safety—on the roads, at home, and at play. He is now a
consultant in this field, which he believes has not been given the
attention it deserves.

Grafftey grew up in the privileged anglophone community of Montreal,
attending Lower Canada College and spending his summers at a family farm
on Brome Lake. He was a sensitive boy, and his recollections of his
father and mother and of growing up in Westmount are told with honest
emotion. He adored his artist-aunt, Prudence Heward, and savored the
company of the great neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who became an
inspiration for his campaign to reduce motor vehicle injuries.

There is a long chapter on John Diefenbaker, whom Grafftey knew well as
a redoubtable political warrior but an indecisive prime minister. He
illustrates vividly, with a succession of stories, how Diefenbaker’s
changing moods meant that his life “seemed to waver between tragedy
and tragi-comedy.” He is not complimentary about Conrad Black, with
whom he sparred over the proper role of government before the latter
moved into the business elite.

He knew Pierre Trudeau in a variety of settings before Trudeau entered
federal politics, but their recent conversations have left Grafftey
convinced that Trudeau’s views on federalism are outdated.
(Unfortunately, Grafftey does not divulge his own ideas on that
subject.) The last and most intimate portrait is of the wayward Hugh
MacLennan, about whom Grafftey writes with genuine affection.

Portraits from a Life is not a work of great substance, but it is
gracefully written and crammed with telling anecdotes. It held this
reader’s attention throughout.