Behind the Scenes: The Life of William Clifford Clark (review)

Few Canadian public servants have reached the notoriety, power or influence as the so-called civil service mandarins who controlled the federal public service between the mid-1930s and the late 1950s. In this period, the central organs of the Canadian state were controlled by a select group of white, English-speaking men who were responsible for creating, administrating and implementing the policy agendas of successive Conservative and Liberal governments. According to some historians – most notably J.L. Granatstein in his seminal history of the federal civil service – these “Ottawa Men” are to be celebrated for their dedication and non-partisan commitment to tackling the depression, administering the massive military and industrial build-up during World War II and laying the foundation for postwar reconstruction.

Building on Granatstein’s narrative, Robert A. Wardhaugh has produced an extensively researched biography of William Clifford Clark, the federal deputy minister of finance and influential mandarin to the governments of R.B. Bennett, William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. Wardhaugh’s book is truly a labour of love, as he painstakingly chronicles vast details of Clark’s life ranging from his time as a American private sector financier in the 1920s, to humble economics professor at Queen’s University in the 1930s, to reluctant but dedicated public servant during the 1940s and 1950s. In William Clifford Clark, Wardhaugh has centred on a unique and somber personality who was the driving force behind the creation of the most important financial institutions within the current phase of Canadian capitalism, including the contemporary Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Canada. For Wardhaugh, Clark represents a textbook public servant: dedicated, hard working and unwaveringly non-partisan. In highlighting these characteristics, Wardhaugh’s portrait of William Clifford Clark is a celebration of the man and his steadfast commitment to his country in a time of crises.

According to Wardhaugh, Clark was not an economist shaped by ideology or political belief but rather by the events of his time. In centering on this theme, Clark is portrayed throughout the book as an objective economic thinker, uniquely suited to address the crises associated with the depression, war and post-war reconstruction. Clark’s independence was well demonstrated when Wardhaugh shows the deputy minister challenging prominent Liberals, Conservatives and the financial classes if they refused to listen to what he perceived as sound economic thinking. Perhaps the most interesting example of this autonomy was in Clark’s determination to create the Bank of Canada. While many bankers saw the establishment of a national bank as weakening their power over monetary policy, Clark pushed ahead despite this opposition, comforted in the belief that nationalized financial regulation would cure the ailing economy. As the depression worsened, Clark’s position (and determination) to create the central bank eventually won the backing of important Conservatives and Liberals, including Bennett and King. It is the portrayal of these political struggles involving the Prime Minister’s office, cabinet, the public service and the financial classes that make the book a laudable piece of work for anyone interested in economics, politics and public administration between the 1930s and the 1950s.

In defending Clark as a simple economic and political pragmatist, however, Wardhaugh has missed a golden opportunity to look beneath the social, economic and political power structures that made up the Canadian state in this important period. Clark’s prominence within the public service, for instance, was attained in part because of his linkage to the English-speaking male patronage network that travelled through the Ontario university system, the private sector and the traditional bourgeois political parties. Perhaps because of the hegemonic nature of this network, Clark himself maintained an irrational disdain for French Canadians in both his private life and within the broader public service. Throughout the book, Wardhaugh describes how these structures operated yet never problematizes or questions how they influenced social relations within (or outside) the state.

The lack of any sustained theoretical...