Lost and found: A new book shines a light on four caretaker Canadian prime ministers

Most of us know Sir John A. Macdonald was Canada’s first prime minister. A good number also know that Sir Wilfrid Laurier was our first French-Canadian prime minister – or at least can recognize him from the $5 bill! However, few people can name the four PMs between the pair. Now, the author of the book The Lost Prime Ministers: Macdonald’s Successors Abbott, Thompson, Bowell, and Tupper hopes to change that.

“There wasn’t much known about these guys. And when I talked to other people, and I used to be a history teacher as well, people didn’t know the fact that we had six prime ministers in the space of five years,” he says.

“Imagine if that were to happen today. They’d think that we were a Banana Republic. And that wasn’t the case. At all.”

Who are these four old, white dudes? Wrong answers only. The correct answers will be revealed this weekend on the #CityNewsBookshelf. #TheLostPrimeMinisters pic.twitter.com/kMisNfDvaM

— John Ackermann (@jackermann) April 15, 2022

He opens the book with a scene-setting chapter on Macdonald who, these days, is considered to have a complicated legacy, at best.

“That’s like touching a hot wire.  He has become a figure of controversy,” Hill admits.  “[But] every prime minister up to Jean Chretien can take some blame for continuing the residential schools.”

Clearly, a full accounting of Macdonald is beyond the space and scope of this book, which is intended more for general readers, not academics.

One of Sir John A’s other failings was not naming a successor, leading to what Hill calls a “deluge” of caretakers.  He lays out all four of these men — John Abbott, John Thompson, Mackenzie Bowell, and Charles Tupper — were quite accomplished before taking office, even if they were rather unremarkable in it.

“They didn’t accomplish anything long-lasting, I guess you could say, but they were interesting people,” he says.  “They were all amazing men, even if they hadn’t become prime ministers.”

First up was John Abbott.

“He was like the least painful choice.  He didn’t even want the job.  Then, within a year, he started to suffer dizziness and spells and it turned out that he had a brain tumour and he died shortly after.”

Abbott did have the distinction of being our first Canadian-born prime minister.  He was succeeded by the much younger John Thompson.

“Thompson was very capable.  I compare him to Pierre Trudeau.  He was the smartest man in the room among the politicians of the day,” Hill says.

However, despite his youth, Thompson died in office at the age of 49.

“Unfortunately, he was what we would now call a junk food addict and he was very overweight. And people didn’t know much about heart disease in those days.  He actually went to London, England, to be inducted into the Queen Victoria’s Privy Council and died of a sudden, massive heart attack in front of [her],” Hill says.  “She was very, very upset about that.”

Mackenzie Bowell was next.

“[Thompson] had obviously not groomed a successor. So, they picked the most senior cabinet minister at the time, who was Mackenzie Bowell, but Bowell was not a leader whatsoever.  And he was saddled with something called the Manitoba Schools Question and just didn’t know how to handle it.  And his cabinet revolted on him.  Seven of the 15 members quit in January of 1896.  So, he couldn’t find anyone to replace them.”

And, finally, there was Charles Tupper, the man from Halifax, and like Macdonald, a father of Confederation, but who had the unenviable task of facing Wilfrid Laurier and the Liberals in the 1896 election.

“So, Tupper was only prime minister for something like six weeks and that was the end of the Conservative reign for quite a few years.”

By the time Hill finished the book, he did develop some sympathy for the four men.

“When you look at politicians from the past, you know, what motivated them, and what kinds of things they did, it maybe helps us to understand a little bit about what politicians nowadays are trying to do.”