It's ironic that the man considered one of Canada's best-ever prime ministers started his career as Liberal Party leader with the worst electoral showing in Canadian history.
Many Liberals were excited to have Lester B. Pearson as their new leader, taking over for Louis St. Laurent. Pearson had been a highly successful minister of state for external affairs, Canadian ambassador to the United States, president of the United Nations General Assembly, and the man who put peacekeeping on the map of Canadian achievements.
But Pearson had the misfortune of taking over the Liberal Party in 1958 when the party was basically out of gas. It had ruled under William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent from 1935 to 1957, but lost that '57 election to the Tories' John Diefenbaker. When the Liberals changed leaders and put "Mike" Pearson in for the 1958 campaign, the result was a debacle of historic proportions. Diefenbaker won 208 seats, the Liberals under Pearson just 48, and it looked as if the so-called natural governing party would be in the wilderness forever.
Forever turned out to be five years.
Fifty years ago this week, Lester Pearson helped bring the Liberals back to power with a minority government. One of the rookies in that class of 1963 was a 29-year-old unilingual francophone who managed to get himself elected in a rural Quebec riding that the Social Credit party had won by 10,000 votes less than a year earlier, in the 1962 election.
His name was Jean Chrétien.
Strangely enough, even though they had nothing in common other than being Liberal MPs, Chrétien and Pearson got on extremely well. But the relationship almost turned disastrous at the beginning.
"I got elected 50 years ago last night and at the beginning, I was in trouble!" Chrétien said Tuesday, at a special conference on the Pearson government's 50th anniversary, organized by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Trinity College.
The issue was the Bomarc missiles that the United States wanted to station in Canada. Chrétien was against that idea, but Pearson said if the previous government had committed to doing it, then he was onside for allowing it.
Chrétien insisted he would vote against the new Liberal government unless it could prove that the previous Diefenbaker government had, in fact, promised to allow the missiles into Canada.
"I didn't want my first vote to be against my party," Chrétien recalled. "But I had committed during the campaign to vote against [the missile installation] unless there was proof we'd agreed to it."
Fifty years later, Chrétien fesses up on how he ended up voting with the Liberal government.
"They showed me some secret cabinet documents," he told the conference. "I couldn't speak much English and couldn't understand what I was reading, but they told me, 'Here's the commitment in writing.' So I voted with the government."
Helping him make his decision was a chance encounter in the Parliament Hill bathroom. Chrétien found himself standing beside Doug Harkness, Diefenbaker's defence minister, who resigned on a point of principle over the missile issue.
"He convinced me we had made the commitment and I should vote with my party," Chrétien said.
Chrétien, who was prime minister from 1993 to 2003, enjoyed reminiscing about the Pearson days. How many of you know that Air Canada has that name because of a private members' bill proposed by Chrétien? The airline was called Trans-Canada Airlines at the time. But there was also Trans-Caribbean Airlines, and Trans-Continental Airlines. Chretién thought that was two TCAs too many, thus the name change.
He also remembered the notorious flag debate, "where I saw members having fistfights in the corridors. John Diefenbaker cried when we changed the flag."
Chrétien worked his way up to parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Pearson. But how did he get into cabinet?
"Lester Pearson's great ambition in life was to be a professional baseball player," Chrétien recalls. "In those days, we had an annual softball game between the MPs and the Parliamentary Press Gallery. I pitched for the MPs' team. Pearson was the manager. We won the game. And that was the day I earned my seat in the cabinet."
Those were heady years for young MPs. Canada brought in Medicare, the new flag, and saw its first violence in Quebec over the issue of separatism. Pearson told Chrétien to keep his head down, work hard, and "You never know. Some day you may become the first French-Canadian minister of finance."
And that's exactly what happened.
Chrétien also related a story of a former college professor of his who once threw him out of class. "When I became finance minister, he wrote me a beautiful note saying, 'Never did I imagine that a French Canadian would become minister of finance, let alone that it would be you."
Is Chrétien still a partisan? You bet he is.
"Mike Pearson was a well-educated diplomat and he wanted to make Canada a better country," Chrétien said, referring to Pearson by his nickname. "And he made a helluva difference. Stephen Harper is also making a helluva difference, but not for the good."
And in the inimitable Chrétien style, he left 'em all laughing.
"My name is Jean Chrétien. In English, that's John Christian. My mother's name was Mary. I have the same initials as Jesus Christ. I'm six-feet tall like Jesus. I started my career at age 30 and by 33, they crucified me."
Tomorrow, part two of The Pearson Years, through the eyes of another young MP of the time who also became prime minister: John Napier Turner.
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