The Mackenzie King Record Volume 1, 1939/1944

In this volume, William Lyon Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada for 25 years, tells in his own words of his activities in public life and the events of the momentous years from 1939 to 1944, as recorded in his personal diary. Mr. J.W. Pickersgill has provided a narrative framework, so that the reader is absorbed at once in the procession of great events, important people, and significant issues. In the course of his official duties, Mr. Pickersgill was involved daily with the Prime Minister's activities, and his experience has been invaluable in drawing together material from the diary from this period, none of which has hitherto been made public.

The story begins with the declaration of war by Canada, and at once we meet the main themes of the book and the leading preoccupations of Canadian public men in the war years; Canada's relations with the Commonwealth, the nature of her participation in the total Allied war effort, conscription, and national government. Then come chapters describing the planning of the devices involving Canada by which heavy initial military reverses were countered: the Air Training Plan, the Ogdensburg Agreement, the Hyde Park Declaration, the destroyer-bases exchange, Lend-Lease, Mackenzie King visits Roosevelt in Washington, goes to England to visit the Canadian Army and to confer with Churchill and other war leaders; Churchill comes to Ottawa and addresses Parliament; the three leaders come together on the heights of Quebec; the Commonwealth Prime Ministers debate at No. 10 Downing Street -- the diary reports minutely and with many fascinating details of formal and informal discussions.

These are the mighty occasions, but the book is also amazingly revealing for both amateur and specialist students of government about the day-to-day conduct of the Canadian Cabinet and Government as its members strove with the problems of office through the dark days of war. The many personalities -- Lapointe and Rogers, Ralston and Howe, Godbout and St. Laurent, Hepburn and Meighen, and a host of other -- crowd the pages in vivid life as Mr. King sets down his record of his relations with them. His moods are many; jovial or lonely, sharply critical or affectionate, self-assured or self-assuring. Of all the personalities in these engrossing pages, that of Mr. King remains probably the most provocative and perplexing, and this record will provide ample stimulus for further discussion of a remarkable career.

This unusual book is to be distinguished from the official biography begun by R. MacGregor Dawson, and being continued by Blair Neatby. Its special importance lies in the fact that it makes accessible large uninterrupted sections of the private diary. Mackenzie King's unrevised daily record of events is of such great importance and historical validity, that the decision has been made to publish not one but three volumes, of which this is the first.

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