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King: William Lyon Mackenzie King, A Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny

by Allan Levine

William Lyon Mackenzie King was arguably Canada’s greatest prime minister; he was also probably the least likeable. In King, author and historian Allan Levine proves you don’t have to be adored by your countrymen to earn their respect and, more importantly, their votes.

King begins with the story of Mackenzie King’s diaries, which document the innermost thoughts of an insecure, lonely, and egotistical man. Unlike past biographies, which used the diaries to expose the “double life” of the private and public man, Levine wants us to examine King’s personality and politics simultaneously. Only by “making sense of the deep and often moving inner conflicts that haunted King” can we understand how he managed to define Canada for over 30 years. In this endeavour, Levine has succeeded masterfully.

Highlights of the book include excellent analysis of the statesman’s formative years working for the Rockefeller Foundation, where he learned how to please everybody just enough to settle labour disputes. Complex political issues are also made to feel fresh by the seamless integration of diverse sources. The famous King-Byng affair, a constitutional crisis that ended up redefining the role of the Governor General, is not only clearly explained, but also enlivened by Lady Byng’s letters, which display her lifelong animosity toward King. 

Levine does not hesitate to criticize King when it is warranted. He was an unappreciative tyrant to his staff, and was directly responsible for refusing to aid German-Jewish refugees in the 1930s and for sanctioning Canada’s terrible treatment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War.

However, King is also acknowledged as a “master juggler” who navigated two conscription crises and reconfigured Canada as a welfare state. Although it can be said with some legitimacy that he failed to concern himself with the lives of individual Canadians, King nevertheless saw himself as representing the best interests of the country, and he worked as ferociously to protect its rights and reputation as he did his own.

So was Mackenzie King, in fact, our greatest prime minister? If your definition involves the ability to win multiple elections and forge consensus, then yes, he was. By examining King’s personality and politics as two sides of the same coin, Levine has produced a wonderfully comprehensive portrait of this intensely disagreeable – yet critically important –  Canadian.

 

Reviewer: Megan Moore Burns

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre

DETAILS

Price: $36.95

Page Count: 560 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-1-55365-560-2

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: 2011-12

Categories: Children and YA Non-fiction, Memoir & Biography