The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada

by Patrice Dutil (Editor)

Fills a great void in Canadian political history by investigating the impact of the often-overlooked figure of Louis St-Laurent.

Much of Canada’s modern identity emerged from the innovative social policies and ambitious foreign policy of Louis St-Laurent’s government. His extraordinarily creative administration made decisions that still resonate on health care, pensions, and housing; on infrastructure and intergovernmental issues; and, further afield, in developing Canada’s global middle-power role and resolving the Suez Crisis. Yet St-Laurent remains an enigmatic figure. The contributors to  The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent  were challenged to assess the personal role of the prime minister in these affairs. To what degree did he set the policy agenda? What was his approach to government structures and the substance of policy? They come to varying conclusions about the features of St-Laurent’s personality that made him effective (or sometimes less so), about the changes he wrought on the apparatus of the state and federal–provincial relations, and about the substance of his government’s policies. The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent  fills a great void in Canadian political history, bringing together seasoned professionals and new scholars to investigate the impact of an overlooked figure. Their meticulous work reveals the far-reaching influence of the politician who presided over the last stage of the longest uninterrupted run of power of any Canadian federal party. Scholars, students, and readers of Canadian history, policy, and politics will find this book interesting, and essential.

Genres: Politics, Canada, Biography

530 pages, Hardcover

Published October 30, 2020

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite the lurid title and appalling cover, "The Unexpected Louis St. Laurent" provides an outstanding history of the St. Laurent government (1948-1967). The book is essentially an anthology of articles written by specialists in various areas such as foreign affairs, indigenous issues, provincial relations and taxation. To justify this approach, editor Patrice Dutil explains that necessary primary sources for a biography simply do not exist. St. Laurent did not write his memoirs, did not give interviews about his personal life and left no private correspondence. Hence the biography of Dale Thomson who worked as an aide in St. Laurent's office from 1953-57 can never be superseded.
St. Laurent was an intensely private man utterly devoid of vanity. He also went to great measures to avoid rocking the boat. Eighteen of his twenty cabinet ministers were carry-overs from the Mackenzie King regime. His ministers all described him as a leader who supported them.
Through this self-effacing style, St. Laurent accomplished many great things. It was St. Laurent who created the Canadian foreign policy of international engagement through multilateralism, that persists to this day. St. Laurent brought Newfoundland into Canada. He built the St. Lawrence Seaway , the TransCanada pipeline and the TransCanada highway. He implemented the Tax equalization scheme that is still used to share Federal tax revenues between Canada's s provinces.
While clearly a modernizer, St. Laurent was profoundly conservative and cautious. His governments practiced rigorous fiscal restraint. He implemented universal hospitalization but stopped short of establishing universal health care. He chose not to accord citizenship to Canada's native peoples. Similarly, he decided not to create a national flag for Canada as desired by francophones because he feared that such a move would offend Canada's anglophones who, he feared, still wanted to use the Union Jack.
One of the best articles is Christopher McCreery's "The Politics of S. Laurent on the Crown, Rituals and Symbols" which drives home the point that in St. Laurent's era there was a very large and vocal segment of Canada's population that was extremely proud of being under the British throne and determined to resist any weakening of Imperial ties . Consequently, St. Laurent devoted a great deal of attention to issues of concern to the monarchists and proceeded very carefully. He gradually phased out the word "dominion" to refer to Canada because it had a had a colonial ring to it , substituting the term "nation". He appointed the first Canadian born Governor-General and shifted the emphasis from Canada being in the British Empire to it being a member of the British Commonwealth.
In Dutil's book there is generally too much space devoted to criticizing St. Laurent's government for not using the same language as today's generation of politicians and having different priorities with respect to what we now call the First Nations and which then were referred to as indigenous peoples. The major objective of St. Laurent's government was to improve health services to the remote indigenous communities rather than to promote their sense of nationhood. In this regard, St. Laurent's government did make significant progress although problems persist to this day. While I find that Dutil's contributors are overly sanctimonious as they judge St. Laurent by the standards of our time rather than his, they still present his positive initiatives fairly.
The contributors, notably Xavier Gelinas, are also critical of St. Laurent for his handling of Quebec and questions related to French Canadians. Gelinas' view is that St. Laurent failed to promote interests of Canada's francophones. For Gelinas, the biggest sin of St. Laurent was in his management of the civil service where the percentage of French Canadian's employed was less than half of their percentage of the Canadian population. The upper levels of the civil service was almost entirely WASP. Gelinas also addresses St. Laurent's incessant squabbling with Quebec's prime minister Maurice Duplessis. Unlike Conrad Black, he fails to note that Duplessis prevailed because he always based his position on the division powers laid out in the British North American Act which at the time was Canada's constitution.
As in any collection, the quality is uneven. Nonetheless taken as a whole "The Unexpected Louis St. Laurent" provides a first-rate history of the St. Laurent government. Its natural place is in university libraries but it still offers pleasures for the general public.

[Tom Axworthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Patrice Dutil has made a very worth contribution to Canadian history and political science by editing a volume of essays on Louis St Lauent, one of Canada’s most successful but least discussed prime ministers.St Laurent was prime minister from 1948-1957 during the boom years of the 1950s.Perhaps because government seemed easier than now( at least financially as government revenues dramatically increased during the decade allowing both increased spending on defence and infrastructure and significant debt reduction), or the fact that St Laurent did not write his memoirs, "Uncle Louis" as he was labeled politically has never got the recognition he deserved. Until now thanks to Dutil.The essays ,especially those by Mary Janigan on St Laurent's championing of Equalization, a basic foundation of our federation, the skillfully admission of Newfoundland to Canada completing the work of Confederation described by David MacKenzie , the robust defence policy and attention to the North outlined by P. Whitney Lackenbauer and the breakthroughs in foreign policy described by Adam Chapnick a d Greg Donaghy make the case that St Laurent was the prime minister who modernized Canada.The book is not a panegyric- essays also point out he was slow to embrace social security and did little to change the old assumptions on indigenous policy but his policy record overall is second to none.My favourite essay is by his granddaughter Jean Therese Riley- she describes growing up in 24 Sussex Drive and the interest and kindness shown to her by her granddad.By many accounts- not just his granddaughter's- he was a modest, intelligent, and kind man, characteristics that explain how he was able to build a coalition that was so effective in governing.

[John Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I ordered this book from the library because Louis St-Laurent is the first prime minister that I can remember. It is not a biography in the normal sense, but series of essays, in large part concerning the political changes that occurred during his prime ministership. Of particular interest to me was the reminiscence of one of his granddaughters. Other chapters offered some interesting insights into his political views and leadership. Still others were little more than a statistical study of his successive political campaigns. All in all, however, it was a worthwhile read and gave me some valuable insights into a significant period in our nation’s history.

[George Hodgson · Rating 5 out of 5]

While there are parts that seem to drag a bit, this is truly a treasured read about one of Canada’s foremost and often forgotten Prime Ministers. Well worth the time!