Canada 1911: The Decisive Election that Shaped the Country (review)

Is Canadian political history making a comeback? There has been a welcome increase in books on the subject in the last few years, and Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie have done their part to keep the trend going in this insightful analysis of the election of 1911. The research is sound, the narrative is engaging, and through an accumulation of modest and careful conclusions, rather than a single iconoclastic thesis, the authors have added greatly to our appreciation of this important moment in our history.

Dutil and Mackenzie have chosen their topic wisely, and not only because this election has long deserved the exhaustive scholarly examination that it finally receives in Canada 1911. The authors also have a lot of fascinating historical material to work with. This was first of all a clash of political titans, the elegant Sir Wilfrid Laurier and the dogged Robert Borden. It was the second electoral showdown between the Liberal platform of free trade with the United States and the Conservative ‘National Policy’ of continued high tariffs (the first was in 1891). The campaign also hinged on a second principal issue, Laurier’s proposal to construct a Canadian navy, which led to the formation of an ‘unholy alliance’ between Borden and Henri Bourassa, the French- Canadian nationalist who had once been a prominent Liberal. The ‘tin-pot navy,’ as the small planned force was derisively called, was too little for Borden and the imperialists in English Canada, who wanted Laurier to give funds to Great Britain directly to build battleships, yet too much for Bourassa and the anti-imperialists in Quebec, who didn’t want him to do anything. The impossibility of Laurier’s position illustrates the incredible difficulty of governing Canada in the early twentieth century, and Dutil and Mackenzie show considerable skill in their handling of this and other complex issues.

The authors tell their story in a chronological fashion, building slowly toward the election to establish the political context of the times, and thoroughly examine the pivotal issues of free trade and ‘the naval question.’ Six out of ten chapters are in fact devoted to the fifteen years of Liberal government that preceded the election, with a special focus on its last two years in office. They then spend surprisingly little time on their blow-by-blow account of the central event of the book, with just one chapter on the campaign in English Canada, and one somewhat longer one about how it unfolded in French Canada. The final two chapters, with the aid of an epilogue and two very useful appendices, break down the election results in remarkable detail. Their painstaking micro-analysis, which delves right down to the poll level in individual ridings, is by far the most comprehensive, authoritative assessment ever undertaken on this subject.

So what do the authors conclude? Have they said anything new? It would be difficult for them to turn existing scholarship on the election on its head; though their research draws on a healthy blend of English and French sources, Dutil and Mackenzie simply have not benefitted from the sort of newly found sources – previously unknown personal papers that have become available, for example – that might have fundamentally reshaped our historical understanding of the election. Responsibly, then, they do not strain the facts to produce a dramatic thesis. They instead offer a collection of deft, careful, and accurate insights about what the election of 1911 was about, who contested it, and how it was won and lost.

Most important are their portrayals of the principal actors in the campaign. The authors comment that Laurier was ‘an assertive and determined leader’ in 1911, not a ‘desperate and fading politician,’ but interestingly, he comes across as both: charming and eloquent as always, but also a bull-headed man who had allowed his party to deteriorate and who had alienated powerful friends during his years in power. The most important observation about Laurier is that he seized...