Seven Oaks Magazine.

Coffee with Suharto: A Review of our Most Benevolent Leaders
July 7, 2006
Carlo Manalo

We educated hifalutin Canadians love to mock and sneer at the cowboy politicos that lead our favorite empire to the south. Can we really be blamed for our skeptical holier-than-thou attitude when we talk about American leaders? And aren’t we really just a smidge jealous? They get senile, propaganda actors, evil oil-royal families and leaders who lie about their oval office blow jobs - with wild political storylines like that to compete with, who could ever get turned on by senate reform or Stockwell Day in a wetsuit? Why don’t presidential (or prime ministerial) sperm stains make for serious political discourse in our country? Where are the cocaine addicted sons of power? The reason we think we’re so starched is because we’re, well, Canada. You know -- peacekeepers, good government, benevolence. Canada doesn’t attack countries like Afghanistan, we “stabilize” them. We don’t prop up murderous undemocratic regimes like Gerard Latortue in Haiti, we merely help “maintain security”. But rest assured that Canadian history isn’t all blue helmets and pelt research, we too have been (and continue to be) led by more than our fair share of racist, drunken nutcases. Let us enjoy a primer on the grimier side of few of our favorite Canadian leaders.

JOHN A MACDONALD

John A Macdonald transformed the Canadian colony with a nuanced frontier chutzpah. Canada’s first Prime Minister was a champion drunk and was often seen publicly intoxicated; all the while he exhibited a wit and an ability to bullshit that, sadly, no longer exists among Canada’s contemporary boozer-leaders. (For example, Ralph Klein barged drunk into homeless shelters to berate the poor - not something John A. MacDonald would do.) As a Liberal rival outlined his platform during a Prime Ministerial debate, a visibly intoxicated MacDonald famously vomited on stage. Picking himself up, Macdonald told the crowd, “see how my opponents ideas disgust me!” When opponents attacked his alcoholism he’d often reply that he “would rather have a drunk Conservative than a sober Liberal.” Despite (or possibly as a result of) his intoxication, Macdonald served as PM for over nineteen years.

Our #1 also played an important corrupt role in the creation of our great trans-continental railway (remember social studies 11?). MacDonald conspired to award the extremely valuable railroad building contract to the Canadian Pacific Railway company in return for large contributions to his Conservative re-election campaign. When confronted, MacDonald vehemently denied the accusations but was eventually forced to step down when a stroke of old-school espionage intercepted his secret telegram correspondence with CP rail baron Hugh Allan: "I must have another $10,000. Will be the last time of calling. Do not fail me. Answer today."

Our $10-bill man also provoked and then oversaw the government response to Métis resistance (usually referred to incorrectly as the Métis rebellion) led by Louis Riel. After purchasing the deed to what is now Manitoba, Macdonald was forced to negotiate with the mixed French-Native blooded Catholic inhabitants of the area who struggled to maintain their culture in the face of the Anglo-protestant expansion. In the end, MacDonald understood that “Riel must die though every dog in Quebec bark his favor”. Even though Quebec’s Catholic Francophones identified with the Métis cause, he figured that he could grab a greater number of Anglo votes by killing Riel. The adored leader was captured, convicted of treason and hanged in 1885.

JOHN ABBOT / JOHN THOMPSON / MACKENZIE BOWELL / CHARLES TUPPER

Canada then moved on to a series of bumbling, unpopular, rich businessmen who never succeeded in winning a single election. John A. stumbled his way to a sixth election victory in the spring of 1891 then promptly died three months later. Among the successors was John Abbot, an unpopular Pillar of Montreal’s Anglo business establishment; John Thompson, a Catholic admired by Protestants who gained support by rallying against aboriginals and their sympathizers; Mackenzie Bowell who did well until he angered Anglo Protestants by reinstating Catholic schooling for the Catholics of Manitoba; and Charles Tupper, a noted adulterer who supposedly succeeded in paying for his doctoral schooling by seducing older women – the reign of the so-called “Ram of Cumberland” lasted only (pardon the inadvertent corniness) 69 days. Although these four PM’s combined to only serve a total of only five years, they succeeded in blazing a trail for all the rich political opportunists that would dream of leading our country.

Our $5-bill man was Canada’s first francophone Prime Minister, but his belief in the separation of church and state made him an enemy of Quebec’s influential Roman Catholic bishops. During his four straight terms as Canadian PM, Laurier had to tiptoe his way around the Second Boer war (Britain was fighting a vicious campaign in the attempt absorb two independent gold-rich republics in what would one day be South Africa.) As a part of the British Empire, Canada was asked to contribute a fighting force to help the English go for gold. French Canadians were unified against the colonial expedition, but Laurier sent a force anyway.

Richard Bedford Bennet

Bennet had some bad timing. He was a rich match company magnate, with a pro-business, pro-banking agenda who took power just in time to watch the Americas fall into the devastating economic depression of the 1930’s. The conservative PM’s policies were presented by a booming number of Canadian socialists as proof of the need for a new economic system. Bennet, along with many other nervous rich men of the time, feared that Communist “subversion” could overthrow the existing set-up that so benefited a big match baron such as himself. He drew up laws that called for the imprisonment of any person or any member of a group that was deemed an “advocate for the violent overthrow of the government”. Under the terms of Bennet’s law, it didn’t matter if the accused had never committed an act of violence, or even personally supported such an action. Bennet quickly had the leaders of the Communist Party of Canada thrown in prison. Soon, though, the government’s case against the leaders was seen as an affront to Canadian values – the case against the Communists backfired; the leaders were released and subsequently became seen as heroes for civil liberties. Bennet also dispatched the RCMP to attack striking workers who had planned to march on Ottawa, producing dozens of casualties. The match baron’s conservative reign would only last for one term.

William Lyon Mackenzie King

Mackenzie King is touted as one of Canada’s greatest leaders, and although he is responsible for the creation of many domestic niceties that we cherish such as the National Film Board and the CBC, his wartime reactions to the plight of Jewish refugees and his seldom-referenced, brutal treatment of Japanese-Canadians make him, undoubtedly, one of the most despicable leaders we’ve ever had.

King is now remembered for his introduction of old-age pensions and his post-Depression era housing and employment relief programs. His role as Canada’s leader during World War II included several meetings with Herman Goering and Adolf Hitler. He would remark in his journal that Hitler came across as: “a reasonable and caring man ... who might come to be thought of as one of the saviors of the world.” He called for a policy of Nazi appeasement, and even as he became aware of Hitler’s escalating genocide, King refused to accept Jews fleeing Europe. When asked how many Jews would be allowed to immigrate immediately after World War II, a Mackenzie King civil servant famously answered "None is too many." This bravado was not simply rhetoric as Mackenzie king put his anti-Semitism into practice: when a boatload of Jewish refugees arrived to Canada aboard the ocean liner St. Louis in 1939, Mackenzie King’s government refused entry to all 907 aboard. As the war escalated, King became extremely unpopular among Canadian servicemen and women; his appearances at Canadian Army installations were invariably greeted with boos and catcalls.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942, King’s government oversaw the forcible removal of all Japanese Canadians from Canada’s west coast (a clear war crime today). In one swoop, one of our “greatest” Canadian Prime Ministers gave 22,000 innocent BC residents 24 hours to pack and then oversaw the incarceration, internment, and separation of Japanese-Canadians from their families. Vancouver’s Japanese were corralled into the Hastings Park race track and sent to varied array of concentration camps set up throughout the BC interior. While incarcerated, the Canadian government confiscated and then sold the Japanese prisoners’ property and belongings at public auction. Three quarters of those displaced were either naturalized or born in Canada. Nonetheless after the end of the war in 1945, King offered Japanese-Canadians the option of “repatriation” back to a war-ravaged Japan at the expense of his government. People of Japanese blood were not allowed to move back to coastal areas until King’s government finally fell almost four years after the end of the war.

The release of King’s private diaries revealed the man’s preference for supernatural advice. The unmarried prime minister conducted frequent séances with hired “mediums” in order to confer with the dead. He wrote that his favorite contacts were Leonardo DaVinci, Louis Pasteur and his dog, Pat.

Pierre Elliot Trudeau made for great television. As Canada’s first leader with enough charisma to take advantage of the new booming mass television culture, Trudeau scored huge across English Canada, playing his role as our rich young bachelor-leader, on a grand vision quest to define an independent Canada in the post-colonial era. Our view of him today is one where the pirouetting medium has become the message. Everything he did, no matter the long term repercussions, is looked back upon today through rose tinted lenses – sure Tommy Douglas was a fire preaching born-leader who stood for all things just and noble, but Pierre Elliot was the bachelor “swinger Prime Minister” who dated Barbara Streisand (at the peak of her beauty, no less).

He was never seen as a great player of the political game, as he often chose to fight with provincial leaders and those who didn’t see eye to eye with his vision of Canada. Westerners in particular came to feel that he had no understanding of their grievances as his government continued to favor Ontario and Quebec at their expense. During an infamous rail vacation through the west in 1982, Trudeau gave the middle finger to protesters in Salmon Arm who pelted his carriage with tomatoes, rocks and eggs. Since Trudeau, the Liberals have never been able to regain support in Western Canada.

P.E.T. was the only leader ever to use the War Measures Act during peace time. During the October crisis of 1970, as the FLQ’s radical strategy for independence gained support from a growing number of Quebecers, Trudeau ordered the army to take control of Montreal. Tanks and army helicopters turned the city into a police state and hundreds of francophones were arrested and thrown in jail without charge. Trudeau’s use of the military against his own citizens succeeded in putting down the FLQ, but it fully entrenched francophone animosity towards the federal government, and further demonstrated that when threatened, Canadian rulers found no problem in quashing constitutional freedoms.

Upon his election, this conservative moved quickly to patch up Canada-US relations which had been frayed since the days of Trudeau. He had a close relationship with Ronald Regan (the man who paved the way for other senile-bigot-actor-politicos like Arnold Schwarzenegger). Regan persuaded Mulroney to sign the North American Free Trade Agreement against the wishes of the majority of Canadians. Soon after, the two Irish-blooded leaders met at a summit and sang “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” in a horrific duet that was described by historian Jack Granatstein as “a public display of sucking up to Reagan [that] may have been the single most demeaning moment in the entire political history of Canada's relations with the United States."

By 1993, widespread public resentment at his creation of the GST, a droopy economy, the breakup of his political coalition and the inability to resolve any issues in Quebec, had produced an approval rating of 10% for Mulroney. Instead of stepping down immediately, he went on a lavish international “farewell” tour at taxpayers’ expense. The enormous anger at Mulroney came through in the next election when the Progressive-Conservatives nominated their first ever woman as leader (knowing that she’d be sent to slaughter). The Progressive Conservatives lost 167 of their 169 parliament seats, in what was one of the most lopsided results ever recorded in a fair democratic election. Mulroney, ever the classy sexist, blamed the Progressive-Conservative meltdown not on anger towards his reign, but instead, on Kim Campbell’s “incompetent” campaign, during which “she was too busy screwing around with her Russian boyfriend.”

Sure, it sounds like the Canadian electorate delivered a knockout blow to the former PM, but thankfully, Mulroney stock remains on the Canadian radar. His son, Ben, now occupies two important posts: one as a reporter, sharing the stories of Canadian d-list celebrities, and another as the host of Canadian Idol, a long running karaoke television show shown to induce nausea in all mammals. At least we can lose the “Cocaine Addicted Sons of Power” envy; we’ve got ours spewing marketing as gossip on CTV.

This Canada day, go ahead and paint an extra large maple leaf on your chest, because at last, Canada has a leader that is proud enough to articulate, and man enough to execute, our noble ideals. We are now a nation with a growing military ready to kill and die for democracy, freedom and the war against terror. We’re showing Afghanis what we already know: we’re nice guys. And it’s for this reason that the true north strong and free will finally succeed where the Soviet and the American and the British empires have failed. We have a Canadian solution that we can only use because we’re so known as good guys; with one fist we “fight the murderers and scumbags” while the other fist opens to reveal government sponsored aid to those who welcome us as liberators. Ask anyone in Kabul, where other countries’ troops are readying oil pipelines, and accidentally bombing wedding parties -- we’re the ones giving back, taking care of the benevolent side of the occupation. Oh, isn’t it just so Canadian!

What’s more, Canada isn’t going to stop. With our recent 17 billion dollar pledge to our fighting forces I’m sure that we’ll fight for democracy in Kazakhstan, East Timor, Zimbabwe, China and Egypt. We’ll fix humanitarian crises in Sudan, Somalia, and Indonesia. And once that’s done, we’ll even deploy a battalion to give our very own Aboriginals potable water.

Such talk about our great country’s holy aspirations remind me of the summer in 1997 when I worked as a barista at the APEC conference. The memories are a little hazy, but as I remember it Jean Chrétien and President Suharto came up to my bar, ordered two coffees and each lit up a cigar. Jean stirred his caffeine, looked off somewhere over my left shoulder and prophesized:

“I tell you, Canada will only grow as a beacon of peace, freedom and democracy in this world”

Chretien’s guest, the tyrannical Indonesian dictator responsible for 200,000 civilian deaths in East Timor and hundreds of thousands more in his own country, looked up with a drowsy smile.