The Power of the Pen: The Politics, Nationalism, and Influence of Sir John Willison by Richard Clippingdale (review)

The genesis of this book was a doctoral thesis completed over four decades ago, and the product is unabashedly 'traditional' political history, which attempts to measure the influence and impact of leading political journalist John Willison. Its focus is the Laurier-Borden era, when, as editor of major Toronto dailies, first the Globe and then the News, he wrote (and spoke) at length on the major public policy issues of the day - French-English / Catholic-Protestant relations, Anglo-Canadian imperialism, Unionism and the Great War, protectionism and free trade, the emergence of class, and the implications of unfettered capitalism.

The framework is chronological, but as issues ebbed and flowed, helpfully thematic, too. Clippingdale sympathetically portrays Willison's shift from Liberal to Conservative, attributing it more to the Laurier-led Liberals leaving Willison than the reverse. In fact, he comes across in this account as a thorough "conservative" at heart, a self-made man become comfortable moving in the circles of the Anglo-Ontario establishment for whom party labels were less ideological than tribal and convenient. Although no "social-gospeller," Willison possessed a measure of social conscience, albeit one that didn't lead him very far beyond well-intentioned platitudes when advocating the kinds of social and economic changes substantive reform required.

On the tortuous course of French-English cultural relations, which understandably comprises a major portion of the book, Clippingdale convincingly argues that Willison was acting from the conviction that vital principles of British liberalism were threatened by even the most modest concessions to the minority. But while Willison editorialized about treating French Canada "with unvarying friendship and generosity" (142), the policies his papers advocated rarely reflected either, and it is hard not to conclude that he never pondered the price national unity paid then and since for such ideological rigidity.

Willison's mid-life embrace of the "imperial-nationalist" cause and his increasingly prominent role in the movement is thoroughly explored, but what emerges is a man more imperialist than nationalist, and one who by the 1920s was left to lament how the Great War and British indifference had eroded his hopes for imperial federation.

In comparison, Willison's role in advancing the Unionist cause in 1917 is given surprisingly short shrift. Similarly, while he quotes Edward Kemp to the effect that Willison did more than any other newspaperman in Canada to put Borden and the Conservatives into power in 1911, Clippingdale offers scant evidence for why the Toronto editor deserved such credit. In fact there are considerably more pages devoted to a dinner in Toronto honouring Willison's knighthood than to either the Khaki or Reciprocity elections, the meat of which merit only two pages each. Given the book's focus on Willison's journalistic influence on public policy debates, such choices are disappointing.

Quite thoroughly researched, well-written, and passionately argued, Clippingdale's biography delineates his subject's flaws and failures as well as his strengths and achievements. As one of the finest - and last - of the "party journalists," John Willison strove to be independent when political and especially economic circumstances allowed, and sought - with notable effect - to raise the standards of his profession. And in the deep grief he felt over the loss of his wife, and earlier, his soldier-son, we are granted touching insights into the private man.

All biographers confront the problem of exaggerating the impact and influence of their subject on his or her times, and in this regard The Power of the Pen falls short more than once. When assessing such influence, the author's excessive reliance on quotations from public statements of praise offered on occasions where Willison was being fêted, or from close friends' congratulatory letters, is no substitute for more concrete, objective evidence.

Mackenzie King privately dismissed Willison as "a Tory snob in his behaviour, tho' he had within him qualities that might have made him a truly great...