CANADA: Last Coffin Nail

So vacuous is vast Canada that the 90,000 assorted farmers, fox-breeders, lobster folk, oystermen and smugglers who have ample room on the 2,184 square miles of Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence can boast that they are the Dominion’s most densely populated province. Last week their ballots drove the final provincial nail into the political coffin of Canada’s rich & prosperous Conservative Premier Richard Bedford Bennett who is now somewhat less of a national hero than Herbert Hoover.

Perfunctory was the beating of Conservatives in Quebec in August 1931 by ever-victorious Liberal Provincial Premier Louis Taschereau, grand old French-Canadian boss. In June 1932 the Conservatives did not feel too badly when they failed to oust the Progressive Liberal Government of farmer-radical Manitoba, but since then the Conservative Generalissimo at Ottawa has known nothing but rout after sickening rout. His Liberal rival, onetime Dominion Premier William Lyon

Mackenzie King, having won Nova Scotia from the Conservatives in August 1933 won British Columbia in November. He scored a double victory in June 1934, winning from the Conservatives on that day both Saskatchewan and Ontario, whose new Liberal provincial Premier Mitchell (“Mitch”) Hepburn bounded to notoriety as a Canadian Huey Long. This June the Liberals captured New Brunswick, and last week they swept Prince Edward Island, leaving not a single province in all Canada governed by Conservatives.

Exulted Liberal King at Ottawa last week: “I hope this will lead Premier Bennett to see what he can expect as a result of refusing the dissolution of Parliament we have asked and clinging to office to the very last minute!” Of caustic Mr. King and the ever-gentlemanly but reserved and unpopular Premier is told this tale:

Mr. Bennett once said, “Will you please loan me five cents, Mr. King? I do not seem to have any change and wish to telephone a friend.”

”Sure, take two nickels,” grinned Mr. King, “and call up all your friends.”

Because in Prince Edward Island every winning candidate was a Liberal last week, Liberal provincial Premier-Elect Walter Lea had fun reflecting that under traditional British parliamentary procedure he might be in a quandary since there was nobody to represent His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition. Canadian editors joined in facetiously suggesting that Prince Edward Island solve the parliamentary difficulty by voting itself down to the status of a county or up to that of a country. Actually, of course, the British genius for muddling through would easily extemporize a solution, nobody much cared what. Also it was pointed out that every election on Prince Edward Island for three decades has been a “landslide,” the islanders always rushing pell mell to vote Conservative or Liberal, whichever is the opposite of the way they voted last time.