John Alexander Macdonald
From Metapedia
Sir John Alexander Macdonald,GCB, KCMG, PC, DCL (Oxon.) (January 10, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first Prime Minister of Canada and the dominant figure of Canadian Confederation. Macdonald's tenure in office spanned 19 years, making him the second longest serving Prime Minister of Canada. He is the only Canadian Prime Minister to win six majority governments. He was the major proponent of a national railway, completed in 1885, linking Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. He won praise for having helped forge a nation of sprawling geographic size, with two diverse European colonial origins, and a multiplicity of cultural backgrounds and political views.
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[edit] Birth and Early Years
John Alexander Macdonald was born in Glasgow, Scotland on January 10, 1815. His father was Hugh Macdonald, an unsuccessful merchant, who had married his mother, Helen Shaw, on October 21, 1811. Together, they produced five children. The first-born, William died in infancy. The next was Margaret who was followed a year and a half later by John Alexander, then a younger brother, James and a baby sister named Louisa. After the failure of Hugh MacDonald's business ventures, the family emigrated to Kingston, Upper Canada in 1820 along with thousands of others seeking affordable land and promises of new prosperity.
Bad luck followed the family to their new country. When he was only seven, MacDonald watched as his younger brother, James was struck and killed by a drunken servant who was supposed to be looking after them. And, Hugh MacDonald's business ventures in the Kingston area were scarcely more successful than they had been in Scotland. However, the family still managed to scrape up the money to send Macdonald to Kingston's Midland Grammar School where, according to biographer Donald Creighton, he studied subjects such as Latin, French and mathematics. "Already he was a voracious reader," Creighton writes, "and he would sit for hours deep in a book, almost oblivious to what was going on." At 14, Macdonald switched to a school for "general and classical education" founded by a newly-arrived Presbyterian minister from Scotland. It was one of the few schools in Upper Canada that taught both boys and girls.
MacDonald's formal schooling ended at 15, a common experience at the time when only the most prosperous were able to attend university. Nevertheless, MacDonald later regretted leaving school when he did remarking to his private secretary Joseph Pope that if he had attended university, he might have embarked on a literary career. "He did not add, as he might have done," Pope wrote in his biography of MacDonald, "that the successful government of millions of men, the strengthening of an empire, the creation of a great dominion, call for the possession and exercise of rarer qualities than are necessary to the achievement of literary fame."
[edit] Political Rise
In 1843, MacDonald entered politics, standing for the office of Alderman in Kingston, a position to which he was elected. In 1844 he was elected to the legislature of the Province of Canada to represent Kingston, gained the recognition of his peers and in 1847 was appointed Receiver General in William Henry Draper's administration. However, MacDonald had to give up his portfolio when Draper's government lost the next election. He left the Conservatives, hoping to build a more moderate and palatable base. In 1854, he helped with the founding of the Liberal-Conservative Party under the leadership of Sir Allan McNab. Within a few years, the Liberal-Conservatives would attract all of the old Conservative base as well as some centrist Reformers. The Liberal-Conservatives came to power in 1854 and under the new administration MacDonald was appointed Attorney-General. During his time in cabinet, MacDonald was usually the most powerful minister, even when other men held the premiership. In the next election MacDonald continued his rise in politics by becoming Joint Premier of the Province of Canada with Sir Étienne-Paschal Taché of Canada East for the years 1856 and 1857.
Taché resigned in 1857, and George-Étienne Cartier took his place. In the election of 1858, the MacDonald-Cartier government was defeated and they resigned as Premiers. In an interesting piece of politics, the Governor General of Canada asked Cartier to become the senior Premier, only a week after his defeat. Cartier accepted and brought MacDonald into office along with him. This was legal as any member of the cabinet could re-enter the cabinet provided they did so within a month of resigning their previous position. MacDonald focused on communications and defence, especially the Inter-colonial Railway. Canada had to pressure the Colonial Office, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island to, as one historian notes, "consider an ambitious scheme proposed by their pushing and turbulent neighbour, Canada."
The coalition government was again defeated in 1862. MacDonald then served as the leader of the opposition until the election of 1864, when Taché came out of retirement and joined ranks with MacDonald to form the governing party yet again.
[edit] Personal Life
John A. MacDonald's adult life was marked by illness, death, drunkenness and tragedy. Yet, he rose above his private unhappiness and personal failings to become a well-loved and highly successful public figure, applying "all his passion to politics". He officially became head of his family on September 29, 1841, with the sudden death of his father Hugh from a brain hemorrhage. Now, John A. was solely responsible for the financial support of his mother and two unmarried sisters. Fortunately, his law practice was going well and his income was supplemented by extensive business activities. He served for example, as a director of the prosperous Commercial Bank of the Midland District as well as its lawyer. The Bank provided him with a large part of his income. He also bought real estate and eventually became a director of a dozen Kingston companies.
But at the same time, he frequently suffered from an undiagnosed illness. The symptoms, weakness and listlessness, began in 1840 and continued sporadically throughout 1841. MacDonald decided he needed a complete rest, and in January 1842 he set sail for Britain, his pockets full of the money (about two thousand dollars) he had won during three nights of playing a card game called Loo. Macdonald's trip proved to be fateful. He recovered his health and met his first cousin Isabella Clark.[39] Isabella's features were gentle and tranquil, according to biographer Donald Creighton, "her hair brushed smoothly away from its centre part in the demure fashion of the 1840s." She also had "large, beautiful blue eyes with an imploring expression that melted more than one observer's heart." "Isa," as MacDonald called her, followed him home to Kingston and on September 1, 1843, they were married. MacDonald was 28, Isabella, 34.
For the first year and a half, the MacDonalds lived the life of a happy, successful couple. John A. had been elected city alderman a few months before his marriage, so he was now a prominent local politician, and his law partnership with his former student, Alexander Campbell continued to flourish. In the fall of 1844, Macdonald was elected as a Conservative Member of Parliament for Kingston. Then, in 1845, everything changed when his beloved "Isa" got sick. She suffered periodic attacks that included severe headaches and numbness. Biographer Patricia Phenix writes that Isabella was diagnosed "as suffering from everything from tic douloureux, a devastating pain in the fifth nerve of her face, to 'uterine neuralgia.'". To relieve the pain, she drank liquid opium as well as sherry. The opium and alcohol combined with the painful attacks left her groggy, exhausted and bedridden. Her chronic illness may also have had psychological causes rooted in an "hysterical personality" compounded by migraine headaches and her dependence on opium. As the illness continued, MacDonald feared Isabella would die. "The warm, pleasant edifice of his domestic happiness," Donald Creighton writes, "was crumbling towards utter ruin".
Macdonald's frequent absences from his law practice to care for Isabella and the expenses of providing medical and nursing care drove him into debt. His partner objected to his casual habit of using law firm revenues to pay his expenses and in 1849, Alexander Campbell decided to leave the partnership. Macdonald had already turned to the bottle for solace during the 12 lonely years of Isabella's illness. They were years in which, according to Donald Creighton, he had become "a bachelor husband who had to go for companionship to bars and lounges and smoking rooms; a frustrated host who drank too much on occasion, partly because it was the only way he could entertain, and because it passed the empty time, and because it was an easy way to forget."
[edit] Freemasonry
Macdonald was a Freemason, initiated in 1844 at St. John’s Lodge No. 5 in Kingston. In 1868, he was named by the United Grand Lodge of England as its Grand Representative near the Grand Lodge of Canada (in Ontario) and the rank of Past Grand Senior Warden conferred upon him. He continued to represent the Grand Lodge of England until his death in 1891. His commission, together with his apron and gauntlets, are in the Masonic Temple at Kingston, along with his regalia as Past Grand Senior Warden. Among the books in his library was a very rare copy of the first Masonic book published in Canada, A History of Freemasonry in Nova Scotia (1786).
[edit] Trivia and Facts
- MacDonald was well known for his wit and also for his alcoholism. He is known to have been drunk for many of his debates in parliament. Two apocryphal stories are commonly repeated; the first describing an election debate in which MacDonald was so drunk he began vomiting while on stage. His opponent quickly pointed this out and said: "Is this the man you want running your country? A drunk!" Collecting himself, MacDonald replied "I get sick ... not because of drink [but because] I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honourable opponent." The second version has MacDonald responding to his opponent's query of his drunkenness with "It goes to show that I would rather have a drunk Conservative than a sober Liberal." (Montreal Gazette, 30 May 1862)
- MacDonald's temper sometimes got the better of him, such as in one incident in the House of Commons when Donald Smith angered him so much, that he charged across the Commons floor to physically attack him. While he was restrained, MacDonald was unrepentant, proclaiming "I'll lick him faster than Hell can scorch a feather!"
- MacDonald spoke a fluent Scots Gaelic, as did around 250 000 other Canadians at the time.
