King's Man

The afternoon sun shafted down through the skylights of Ottawa's gloomy, barnlike Coliseum. Floodlights played on the poster portraits of Sir Wilfrid Laurier and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Twenty-nine years ago Mr. King had taken over from his longtime friend Sir Wilfrid. Now 1,227 delegates to the National Liberal Convention were picking Mr. King's successor.

On stage with other Liberal bigwigs, dapper Louis St. Laurent, 66, Secretary of State for External Affairs, nervously fingered his bristly mustache. He was Mr. King's man and the convention's almost certain choice. In a nearby box sat chic, grey-haired Madame St. Laurent. As the ballots were counted, eager supporters kept rushing up to whisper to her: "Tres, Tres, Tres bon." Each time she answered: "Attendez." They did not have to wait long for the formal announcement: St. Laurent on the first ballot with 848 votes.

The new leader rose to speak routine words: "It is indeed a great honor and a very heavy responsibility to be selected to lead a great national party." His responsibility will be greater than that. This fall, when Mackenzie King gives up the Prime Minister's job he has held for 21 years, Louis St. Laurent will take that on too.

No Headquarters Needed. Louis St. Laurent was a topnotch Quebec lawyer and political novice when he was picked by Mr. King in 1941 for the Justice Ministry. His dignity, sincerity and all-round ability soon won him a national reputation as a statesman.

Although he had long known that he was King's man for the Liberal leadership, he never acted like a candidate. He spent the pre-convention weekend at his Quebec City home with his grandchildren. For three days last week he followed his usual routine in the external affairs office. Even when the convention got underway he spent most of his time seated dutifully on the platform. Occasionally and a little self-consciously, he drifted through the ornate lobby of the Chateau Laurier--the closest Ottawa came to a smoke-filled room--chatting with friends and newsmen. He had no need for a campaign headquarters; Prime Minister King overshadowed the campaign as well as the convention.

It was no Philadelphia-style show. At the opening, the band of the Governor General's Foot Guards played God Save the King and O Canada, packed up and was heard no more. Mackenzie King intoned the Lord's Prayer, stood for a 40-second ovation, then got down to business. There were no parading delegates, no partisan banners.

No Balloons Wanted. There was not much fun for delegates in staid Ottawa. Although there was plenty of rye in hotel rooms, not even beer could be bought in the convention cafeteria. Young Liberals did without balloons at their dance because Mr. King disapproved. Out at the Experimental Farm, there was a garden party at which the old (73) Mr. King played host, shook a thousand hands and stuffed cakes into his mouth five times for the photographers.

For two days, with Mackenzie King watching every move, the resolutions committee hammered away at a party platform. The convention dodged such issues as inflation and Communism. To please the seven Maritime and western provinces, it plumped for a Royal Commission on freight rates. In an assertion of Canadian nationalism, it called for abolition of appeals to the Privy Council in London. It favored a defensive union with the U.S. and Western Europe. (Almost unnoticed, young Liberals slipped through a resolution amendment favoring "union security" and calling on the government to enforce the labor code. Snapped big, bumbling Labor Minister Humphrey Mitchell: "A stupid decision.")

Western Hospitality. Balloting for the leadership came last on the program, and by that time most of the opposition to Louis St. Laurent had faded away. After playing coy for two days, Nova Scotia Premier Angus L. Macdonald withdrew. Health Minister Paul Martin reluctantly got on the St. Laurent bandwagon. The Peck's Bad Boy of the Liberal Party, onetime Air Minister Charles Gavan ("Chubby") Power, never had a chance, and wound up with just 56 votes.

Chipper Minister of Agriculture Jimmy Gardiner was the only one who stayed in the fight to the end. All through the convention his 50 henchmen worked to collar support for him, kept telling themselves that "anything could happen." From his Chateau Laurier suite Jimmy Gardiner extended western hospitality to all comers, nipped down to the lobby at strategic moments. He threw a cocktail party for the press, a luncheon for western delegates. Gardiner got 323 votes. Said he sadly: "This isn't like an ordinary election campaign where you can take your opponent apart."

Liberal Salesmanship. With an eye to the general election due in the next year, the Liberals decided to appoint a party organizer, as well as public relations and press liaison officers. Need for a better job of selling the Liberal Party to the people was clearly indicated by the past year's record: except for the New Brunswick Liberal victory (won largely in an anti-Ottawa campaign), they have lost every major election test.

The Liberals figure that in the end, Louis St. Laurent will be their best salesman. He is respected in Quebec (where the Liberal Party has been overwhelmed by the Union Nationale), admired elsewhere as a man who combines all that is best in French and English-speaking Canada. He symbolizes the unity which his nomination speech emphasized. For Louis St. Laurent, whose father was a French Canadian merchant and whose mother was first generation Irish, that is not hard. It is often said that when he was young, he never even knew that there were two official languages in Canada: "I just thought that there was one way to talk to my father and another to talk to my mother."

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