First Person. Valerie Knowles
that he might have been the family doctor in Montreal, Dr. Evans, or his Rockland counterpart, Dr Tweedie. But that is not important. What is significant is that Cairine Wilson was so stung by the physician’s remarks that she began seriously to question her role in life and the conventional wisdom about that role. Was she content to be merely a jewel in her husband’s crown, a gracious, well-dressed chatelaine, who directed the running of a large household, raised her children, and discharged the prescribed social obligations? Or did she want something more — something that she could not yet define but which was beginning to create a gnawing sense of restlessness? Apparently she answered yes to the second question because when the family lived at 240 Daly Avenue, she enrolled in a mind and memory course offered by the Canadian Correspondence College in Toronto.26 With this conscious decision to hone her mental skills and broaden her horizons, Cairine Wilson set out to become something more than just a society matron. That something turned out to be a conscientious worker for a large number of community and national organizations and a zealous Liberal whose organizing genius and quiet air of authority inspired hundreds of women and led to the founding of two key Liberal Party associations: The National Federation of Liberal Women of Canada and the Twentieth Century Liberal Association.
Given her family’s involvement and her own longstanding interest in politics, it was almost inevitable that Cairine Wilson would choose this field in which to carve out a special niche for herself. She took the plunge during the federal election campaign of 1921 when she suddenly found herself called upon to speak in public, something that she had hitherto considered quite beyond her powers.27 It is not known who asked her to give that address, but it is possible that it was that charming neighbour from across the street, Henry Herbert Horsey. A dedicated Liberal, who had been defeated at the polls in 1917, he was very active in the Eastern Ontario Liberal Association, where he became a good friend and political mentor of Mrs Wilson. Such was Cairine Wilson’s gratitude to Horsey that she made a pitch to Mackenzie King, in December 1927, to have her mentor, who had been defeated in two more elections by then, summoned to the Senate. With characteristic diffidence, she wrote, “My small entry into political life was brought about by Mr H. H. Horsey and naturally we should be pleased to see him appointed to the Senate.”28 On 14 December 1928 Henry Herbert Horsey was called to the Red Chamber where he became one of its most popular members. Whether or not his good friend’s lobbying was instrumental in getting him appointed is open to conjecture, however.
With Horsey’s and Uncle Willie’s support and encouragement, Cairine Wilson ventured into politics, taking on the sort of jobs that had hitherto been the preserve of men. Unlike most other women of her time and class, she was not content merely to adorn political banquets and pour tea at election gatherings. Shunning the role of dilettante, for which she had little but contempt, she waded right into the arena of political combat, tackling the routine of organization and rubbing shoulders with other workers. The first political office that she took on was that of joint president of the Eastern Ontario Liberal Association (The other president was Gordon C. Edwards, lumber merchant nephew of Senator Edwards), which supervised organization in twenty-three constituencies adjacent to Ottawa. She accepted the post in June 1921, at a time when the newly formed Progressive party, under Thomas Crerar, the Conservatives, led by Arthur Meighen, and the Liberals, headed by Mackenzie King, were gearing up for an election campaign that would culminate in the return of the Liberals to power.
Wily Mackenzie King, who would lead the Liberals to victory on 6 December 1921, was a good friend of Norman Wilson and a party chief who attracted the unflagging loyalty and friendship of Mrs Wilson, no matter how much he disappointed her by the stand that he took on some of the issues closest to her heart. This consummate political strategist and tactician was born in Berlin (Kitchener), Ontario in 1874, the son of John King, a lawyer, and Isabel Grace Mackenzie, the daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie, pre-Confederation Canada’s most colourful radical. Raised on tales of his grandfather’s exploits, King early felt himself destined for a great career, in which thinking he was constantly encouraged by his possessive mother whom he worshipped.
When the future prime minister was still a child, his debt-ridden father moved his young family to Toronto, where the shy, introverted son later attended the University of Toronto. Following graduation, Mackenzie King spent a year doing social work at the University of Chicago. He then completed his studies at Harvard University and returned to Canada in 1900 to become the first deputy minister of the fledgling federal Department of Labour. In 1908, he entered the House of Commons as a Liberal and the following year he became the Minister of Labour in Laurier’s government.
After this dazzling beginning, King lost his seat in the election of 1911 that routed Laurier and the Liberals from office and brought Robert Borden and the Conservatives to power. For the next few years the plump bachelor with three university degrees and an ingratiating personality divided his time between serving as a labour negotiator for the Rockefeller family in the United States and working for the Liberal Party and the furtherance of his own political ambitions. Engaged by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1914 to undertake a study of capital-labour relations, he wrote Industry and Humanity: A study in the Principles Underlying Reconstruction which earned him an enviable reputation as a progressive authority on labour-management relations. His political future, however, was always uppermost in his mind, so when Borden called an election in 1917 King returned to Canada to participate in the bitterly fought campaign, a contest which was enlivened and embittered by that most contentious of issues, compulsory military service. Two years later, in 1919, he won the leadership of the Liberal Party when four-fifths of the convention delegates from Quebec voted for him instead of W.S. Fielding, who had deserted Laurier over conscription.
Convinced that the hand of destiny was upon him, the new leader set out to transform a faction-ridden party that had been reduced to eighty-two seats in Parliament in the 1917 election into an harmonious political alliance. Fortunately for the party’s survival and well-being, King had the single-minded vision and political shrewdness to realize this goal, but the task would take many years to achieve. Along the way he would receive generous assistance from Cairine Wilson, who realized full well the invaluable contribution that educated women could make to Liberalism and the Liberal Party, both of which she identified with the good of Canada.
It is significant that Mrs Wilson took on her first political office in 1921 because that year marked the first time that all Canadian women were eligible to vote in a federal election. However, although she was to play a significant role in the campaign preceding this election, Cairine Wilson could not claim that she had made any contribution to the women’s suffrage movement and the breakthrough developments that finally culminated in 1918 in voting equality at the federal level. As a shy housewife she had been far removed from the struggle. Nevertheless, in the years ahead she would devote enormous amounts of time and energy to organizing women into an effective political force, albeit one designed to advance the interests of an established party.
She took an important step in this direction when, as chairwoman of a fifty-member committee, she played the leading role in founding the Ottawa Women’s Liberal Club, of which she served as president for three years. Shortly after its launching with seventy members in February 1922, Cairine Wilson wrote to Mackenzie King:
In a reckless moment you once suggested that we might take the stump together. I have no intention of inflicting such an ordeal upon you, but it would give me and all the other members of the newly formed Ottawa Women’s Liberal Club immense gratification if you could consent to speak at our inaugural luncheon on March 11th.
Our corresponding Secretary has already written to you officially, but I wish to add a personal appeal. In some way I seem to have attained undue prominence for I do not feel gratified to act as chairwoman upon such an occasion.29
Certainly the last thing that she felt was gratified because Cairine Wilson dreaded public appearances. Even after she had chalked up an impressive record of them, she felt unsure of herself when it came to presiding in a public capacity. This point is driven home in a letter to Mackenzie King in which she noted poignantly, “Your endorsation means much for I am afraid there are times when, without the never failing interest and encouragement of our late legal adviser and constant friend, I am inclined to hesitate and seriously doubt my own ablility to proceed.”30
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