First Person. Valerie Knowles
of my husband, I am of the opinion that it should revert to the Liberal Party represented by its chief WLM King for the purpose of being his official residence.”44
Robert Mackay did not confine himself to supporting the party financially and to assisting in the purchase of a house for its somewhat impecunious leader. He also lobbied vigorously on behalf of defeated election candidates and operated as a de facto riding worker in Montreal, sniffing out developments of possible interest to his fellow Liberals and firing off letters bristling with wise counsel. After the election of 1896, for instance, he reported to Laurier:
I had the pleasure of meeting today Dr Innes (whom I knew before) who was the member for S. Wellington for so many years & one of your most earnest admirers and supporters while you were both in the cold shades of opposition. He was signally unfortunate in losing his reelection at this particular time, & his friends feel it would be a gracefull [sic] recognition of his services to the Liberal Party for over 40 years if the Government could see its way to present him with the Senatorship now vacant for Ontario. I make this suggestion with all due regard to the many considerations which must enter into the giving of this appointment.
I am sorry to have to trouble you so much, but I feel I would be neglectfull [sic] of my duties to our Party did I not warn you of a growing feeling of discontent among your English speaking Protestant supporters in this district. They are being threatened with the filling of any vacancies that may arise in positions now held by their class by our French Canadian friends. Needless to state that these reports come principally from our opponents, $ it will be, if justified by events, made the most of to the detriment of the Government, & I have therefore felt it right (not sharing in the feeling myself) to send you a friendly word of warning regarding any appointment to such vacancies.45
That same election of 1896 also saw Cairine’s father enter the political fray for the first time. After “accepting the call of the leading representatives of the mercantile, manufacturing, and industrial classes of Montreal,” he contested St Antoine division for the Liberals, but lost to his Conservative opponent. He did succeed, however, in reducing the adverse majority in this long-held Tory riding from 3,706 to 157.46
Four years later, he again tried his luck in St Antoine division, but once more he went down to defeat. The following year, on 21 January, just as the old Queen’s life was ebbing away, he was appointed a Liberal senator for the division of Alma in the province of Quebec. His commission as senator was the last one signed under Victoria’s reign.
Once appointed to the Senate, the family patriarch began making regular trips to Ottawa to attend sessions of parliament. He was frequently accompanied by Cairine, who, alone of the Mackay children, appears to have taken an interest in politics at an early age. Perhaps it was the long passages that her father read from the works of Gladstone, Fox, Morley and Bright to his assembled family that fired her imagination, or maybe it was the heated political discussions that, along with the comings and goings of politicians, were so much a feature of life at Kildonan. But more likely it was the magnetic presence of the tall, graceful Sir Wilfrid himself, who with his high starched collar and shock of grey-tinged chestnut hair epitomized a late Victorian prime minister. A frequent visitor to Kildonan, Sir Wilfrid would pat young Cairine’s black head and tell her that one day she would be the wife of a great politician.47 Like so many other admirers, she quickly succumbed to the prime minister’s charm and one day when she was brushing the hair of eight-year-old Edward she groaned, “ You will never make a Sir Wilfrid Laurier!”
In Ottawa, Cairine often stayed at the Laurier home, the large brick house in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill area that is now known as Laurier House. Long would she remember the happy mornings that she spent there: breakfasting with Sir Wilfrid, who taught her how to eat oatmeal in true Scottish fashion — with salt — and later watching her idol depart for his office, wearing impeccably creased striped trousers and a dignified Prince Albert coat with, no doubt, the horseshoe stickpin that was his signature in the lapel.48
Still later in the day there might be visits to the Senate Chamber, then, as now, found at the east end of the “House of Commons Building,” and to the Commons Chamber itself, a square-shaped room, located not in the extreme west of the Centre Block, as today, but in the middle of the building. Then, in the evening, there might be a social function to attend. One, in fact, stands out above all the others. This was the ball at Government House at which Cairine met her future husband.
3
YOUTH AND MARRIAGE
Cairine Wilson once recalled that it was a quadrille which first brought Norman Wilson into her life. Whether this is correct — at the time of the interview she was not sure that her memory was all that reliable on this point — the fact remains that she met her husband at a State ball at Government House, the rambling Regency-style villa built in 1838 by a fellow member of the Clan Mackay, Rideau Canal contractor, Thomas MacKay.1 It was May 1905, and Cairine Mackay was making her first visit to the Lauriers in Ottawa. She had come to the capital to see her father, who was then attending sessions of the Senate. In the absence of her ailing mother, she accompanied the Senator to the gala function at Rideau Hall, one of a host of “entertainments” staged annually by the newly arrived governor general, Lord Grey, and his wife, Alice. Had she tried, Cairine Mackay could not have chosen a more romantic setting in which to meet her future husband: a brilliantly lit ballroom in which massive oil portraits looked down on swirling dancers, some of whom were resplendent in gold-braided Windsor uniforms. Nor could she have hoped for a more fitting person to make the necessary introductions on that memorable May eighteenth evening: Lady Laurier.
Formidably plump Zoë Laurier, who was then emerging as a political personality in her own right, had no children of her own. However, she loved the company of young people, especially women. So, not surprisingly, she took a liking to shy Cairine Mackay and, eager to make her feel at ease, presented her to one of the capital’s most eligible bachelors, Norman Wilson. To the end of her life, Lady Laurier would claim responsibility for initiating the resulting match and would take a keen interest in the six Wilsons who were born before her death.2
Norman Wilson c 1925.
At the time of the introduction, Cairine was twenty years old, five feet, six inches in height, slender, and, although reserved and serious, not without a quiet sense of humour and a sparkle in her deep blue eyes. No doubt it was this sparkle and her warm smile that attracted her to Norman Frank Wilson, who, at age twenty-nine, was the second youngest member of the House of Commons (George Parent, a friend and fellow Liberal in the House, was three years his junior.)3 A newspaper photograph of the time reveals a youthful-looking, clean-shaven Norman, with dark hair parted in the middle and a rather handsome face. Like Cairine’s father, he had high cheekbones and a deep forehead, but unlike the gruff, intimidating senator, he was sunny and cheerful. To add to his appeal, he was a Liberal and a Presbyterian, who came from an exemplary bourgeois family that had been headed by a dynamic entrepreneur of Scottish origin, William Wilson.
Norman’s father, who died in 1891, was a native of Edinburgh, who had emigrated to Montreal with his parents as a young boy. He launched his working career by serving as a Crown Timber agent in Buckingham, Quebec (known as Canada East in those days). Then he settled in nearby Cumberland where he had purchased a property in 1845. Once established in this small eastern Ontario community, he proceeded to forge a leading role for himself as a farmer, storekeeper, sawmill operator, flour mill owner, township reeve and justice of the peace. With his wife, Mary McElroy, he also raised a large family.
The first child, Catherine Margaret, was born in 1859, the youngest, Norman Frank, in 1876. Of thirteen children born to William and Mary Wilson, nine survived to adulthood, among whom was Catherine or Kate, as she was called.4 In 1885, she married William Cameron Edwards, an Ottawa Valley lumber tycoon, who became Liberal MP for Russell in 1887 and, then, in 1903, a Senator. As a member of the Upper House he became a good friend of Cairine’s father because not only did the two millionaires occupy adjoining seats in the Senate for a time, they also