I am sending you, with this letter, as a little Christmas gift from me to you, a real photograph of you and me, taken on the day of my visit to Kitchener. I had mine framed and took it with me to France, and Belgium, and Holland, and England, and always had it on my desk, on the boat across the ocean both ways as well as in the hotels… It will help you to remember the happy time we had at Woodside and I hope will add to your happiness at this Christmas and always.
It brings with it lots of love from me to you.
Your very true friend,
Mackenzie King
Woodside had hardly left his mind. Often the spirits of Bella, Father, Mother, and Max recalled with him the good times they had there, the beautiful golden days safe in the nest from which he had flown to begin his career. Mother pointed out that although he was still the hoy she knew at Woodside, so much had happened. In a seance on July 7, 1946, she had told Joan glowingly how Willie began by trying to help children in the hospital and then became a young man living in the slums, trying to help the poor He then tried to fight for Labour’s rights and went into Parliament as the minister of labour. Her spirit recounted how, following Willie’s career all her life, she found he never lost his sympathy with the common people and their needs. He went to England and fought for the rights of Canada as an equal partner in the British government.
King agreed with the spirits that he had avoided Civil War during the conscription crisis. He was glad to have been re-elected and to see new policies bring betterment to the citizens of his country. Despite the war, life had changed greatly for the nearly twelve million people of Canada these last few years: unemployment insurance had been enacted in 1940; quite recently old age pensions were extended to cover more people; and baby bonuses had been paid to families with children since June, 1946. He could be proud that the State guaranteed people a better quality of life than it had when King began as party leader. In fact, their position had now changed in the world. On January 3, 1947 the prime minister was one of twenty-six people to become citizens of Canada when he received certificate number 001. Canadians were no longer defined as citizens of Britain. Lastly, he could be satisfied that the way was prepared for the people of Newfoundland to join Canada as her tenth province. In many ways most of the dreams he had had as a young man were now fulfilled.
You have taken the Liberal Party out of the depth and raised it to the heights, Grandfather Mackenzie told him. Your name will go down in Canadian History, as the one who has done most for Canada. You have done honour to the names you bear.
The spirits let him know his tasks were not yet completed. They told him that they were working through him still, that he was chosen to do important missions as an international statesman. Hitler, he was informed, was now in lower hell, chained to eternal suffering. But new problems threatened the world. When a young cipher clerk working at the Russian embassy in Ottawa brought forward evidence of a Soviet spy ring in September 1945, the spirits applauded King’s investigation of the Gouzenko Affair. They said King had exposed the treacheries of Russia, but encouraged him to visit Stalin. King was invaluable in dealing with such delicate issues. You must, Sir Wilfrid and others told their champion, stay in office.
He would try to hold on, but at age seventy-three, he knew it could not be for much longer. He worried that the money, books, and the paintings of himself were not all of the legacy he desired to leave. He excitedly discussed with the spirits ideas for turning over Kingsmere, Laurier House, and Woodside to all the people of Canada.
What he really wanted to give the people of Canada were his memoirs. The spirits promised he would be given the strength and the time and urged him again and again to leave the story of his life as an example for others. Only there was so much to tell, and even more to do yet. He worried that he would never complete one more important trip abroad, for the upcoming Imperial Conference.
London, Hotel Dorchester
October 15, 1948
Violet Markham was shocked to see her friend looking so shrivelled, so frail – a “sick” man. However, thinking back to her visit to Kingsmere in July 1939, she realized that even then the cares of office had sucked the vigour from King’s body. “Will-power, not health, carried him through the war,” she’d concluded. King was, in fact, the only leader to stay in office after the war. F.D.R. had died, and Churchill’s party had fallen out of public favour.
This broken man was but a shadow of the person she had met at Rideau Hall, the Governor General’s residence in Ottawa, almost forty-three years ago to the day. She would remember it in her memoirs – October 21, 1905, Trafalgar Day in her native England: Her host, Governor General Lord Grey, strode across the drawing room, and trailing behind him was a “pleasant-looking man of medium build, with a round face and abundant fair hair.”
“You must meet Mackenzie King,” Lord Grey told her, “he will be prime minister of Canada some day.”
After speaking with the confident thirty-one-year-old man, she felt her doubts about the surprising prediction diminish. The young deputy minister of labour, like herself, had many hopes of helping and reforming humankind. “A charming young man with all the right ideas” she wrote in her diary.
Markham soon returned to her well-feathered nest in England. She married, but continued her work as a social activist. Her campaigning letters were written on stationery that bore the names “Mrs. James Carruthers” and “Miss Violet Markham.” King’s activities continued to excite her sense of social justice. She found him intriguing: “his personality might be likened to a set of those Chinese boxes which fit so surprisingly into each other, each box different in size and colour and yet making a perfect whole…” But as their friendship grew over the years, Markham realized that his belief in personal survival after death and the power of communication with those who had passed on was “a line of thought in which I was unable to follow.” Rex’s spiritualism, Markham decided, was a box unto itself, a special interest for his private time.
She regretted that her friend had never married. As late as the early thirties King’s name had been linked romantically with that of his longtime friend, Julia Grant. Grant, Ulysses S. Grant’s granddaughter, had married to become Princess Cantacuzène. She had eventually divorced the Prince for his infidelities, but by that time King’s passions had decidedly cooled. Markham had long ago determined “the mother-cult stood between him and the normal ties of wife and child, which can humanize and soften the often inhuman job of politics.” And the blows rained down. She knew that over the years her friend had suffered. “Few men have been more bitterly attacked or accused of motives more unworthy.”
She and Rex passed their time discussing politics. Russia and other hot spots were on their minds – especially King’s, as illness had forced him to suddenly withdraw from the conference.
“My own feeling,” King told her regarding India or Pakistan becoming part of the Commonwealth, “is that the Commonwealth shall need all the friends they can have in what before long may be a test as to who is to rule the world.” In his mind were the voices of F.D.R. and others cautioning him about events in the East and warning that war was coming within the next two years.
There was so much King wanted to say, but his shortness of breath and influenza, combined with the effects of strain and pressure over the years, prevented him from talking much.
“Why don’t you, for the time being, forget about politics,” Markham suggested. She mentioned the book she was writing and urged him to “dictate a few reminiscences about your home and your childhood.” But, she realized even that small effort was impossible. The sands were running out.
“Come to Wittersham,” she begged. “Stay for a week. Bring your staff,” she offered. When King declined, she tried another tactic. “I’m