Bob Plamondon - John Diefenbaker: The Political Outsider & Man of the People who became Prime Minister

Bob Plamondon is an acclaimed writer and Canadian historian who thinks for too long John Diefenbaker has been unfairly maligned by his critics and hasn’t been given his due. 

He’s the author of six books. including Blue Thunder: The Truth About Conservatives from Macdonald to Harper & The Shawinigan Fox: How Jean Chretien Defeated the Elites and Reshaped Canada.

His latest book is called Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker’s Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence. 

Diefenbaker was a political maverick- a prairie populist who rose from humble beginnings to become Canada’s 13th Prime Minister.  

He was a complex and at times polarizing figure who throughout his 39 years as a Member of Parliament, remained a political outsider, even within the Conservative Party he led. 

Diefenbaker’s strong personality alienated some of his fellow MPs in the Tory caucus who regarded him as a lone wolf – brusque, domineering and untrusting.

But Dief the Chief’s charisma captivated ordinary Canadians who were inspired by his commitment to their health and welfare, his oratorical flair, and his common touch. They saw  John Diefenbaker as a “Man of the People.” 

John George Diefenbaker was born in 1895 in Neustadt, Ontario. In the southwestern region of the province. He was the grandson of German and Scottish immigrants.  

When he was 8 years old, he and his family moved West where he grew up poor in the fledgling province of Saskatchewan. 

John Diefenbaker served as a lieutenant in the First World War. 

After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan in 1919, he became a small-town lawyer who reveled in fighting for the marginalized, downtrodden and dispossessed. He was a self-described “sworn enemy of discrimination and injustice.” 

As a young man, Diefenbaker brimmed with political ambition. It took him some years to find his footing, but once he finally won an election, he never lost his riding again.   

In the mid-1950s, Diefenbaker took over a fractious and moribund Conservative Party, refashioned it in his image, and transformed it into a political juggernaut, winning three consecutive federal elections, one of them in a historic landslide.

John Diefenbaker provoked strong emotions.

His critics accused him of being an erratic, reckless and ill-disciplined leader. They blamed him for what they regarded as a series of foreign policy blunders, including mishandling Canada’s critical relationship with the United States. They attacked him for canceling a Canadian aviation marvel - the Avro Arrow. 

His supporters though hailed him as a principled visionary, praising him for giving Indigenous peoples the vote, championing the Bill of Rights -a precursor to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, instituting a more inclusive immigration policy, and boldly opposing South Africa’s readmission to the Commonwealth due to its failure to renounce its White Supremacist system of Racial Apartheid. 

John Diefenbaker was a man of contradictions. 

He could be petty, vindictive, unforgiving and even cruel. 

But also, warm, witty, generous and magnanimous. 

At this fraught moment, in which Canada is facing existential threats to its economy and political sovereignty from the sitting president of the United States, Donald Trump, John Diefenbaker provides a historical example of an idealistic, impassioned political leader who was a fierce, unrepentant Canadian nationalist, and refused to capitulate or bend the knee to American hegemony.