The John A. Macdonald Retrospective 2-Book Bundle. Ged Martin

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      Sir John A. Macdonald appeals to farmers and factory workers to save the National Policy in 1891. He barely survived the election campaign.

      On May 12, the day after Tarte’s bombshell, Sir John A. Macdonald suffered a stroke, so slight he hoped to disguise the episode even from Agnes. Indeed, Thompson thought him “well and bright again” when he returned to Parliament on Friday, May 22. However, that evening, his implacable foe Cartwright spoke with menacing sarcasm about Macdonald’s generosity to Kingston, hinting at revelations regarding “Mr. Connolly.” The House rose late but the prime minister lingered by his desk, as if instinct told him he would never return. Eventually, a colleague tactfully suggested it was “about time boys like you were home in bed.” That weekend, Macdonald fell ill, and for the next two weeks, he fought for his life. “Condition hopeless,” was the medical verdict on May 29, as a series of strokes gradually destroyed him.

      Parliament, government, even Canada itself — all virtually went into abeyance. It was an odd succession crisis, for the two most obvious candidates, Thompson and Tupper, were determined to avoid the job. Despite his previous doubts, Macdonald had urged his colleagues to “rally around Abbott,” but he had changed his mind when the Senate leader begged to be omitted from the Cabinet: Abbott was “too selfish” to lead. But, with Langevin politically wounded, Abbott became the compromise successor.

      In the cities, bells announced that the battle was over. Minutes after Macdonald died at 10:15 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, 1891, they were mournfully tolling in Ottawa. Telegraph messages flashed across the country, and soon after eleven, the solemn peals broke out in Toronto. Genuine grief swept Canada, with headlines such as “Dead” in Qu’Appelle and “He Is Gone” in Victoria. The whole country paused for his funeral: at Brandon, even the locomotives were draped in mourning. John A. Macdonald was interred in Kingston, next to his mother “as I promised her that I should be there buried.” Thirty years on, Helen still controlled her son.

      In his tribute to Macdonald, opposition leader Laurier thought it “almost impossible” that Canada could “continue without him.” Yet, curiously, Sir John A. was soon largely forgotten. Journalist Hector Charlesworth recalled that “to vast numbers of the community he seemed the prop which supported the whole structure of Canadian nationality.” When his Dominion carried on without its creator, that mirage of Macdonald’s indispensability was dissipated. Britain’s Conservatives had built a million-strong campaigning organization, the Primrose League, on the memory of Disraeli, but nothing came of a proposal to form a Macdonald Guard to defend his ideals. His memory was discredited by the emerging tide of scandal. A month after Macdonald’s death, the mythical Bancroft was exposed — although, like Macdonald himself, the Kingston contract scandal was hastily forgotten, especially by biographers. Although Abbott was only caretaker prime minister, in August he fired Langevin from Cabinet. “The Old Man’s friends must feel … that he was fortunate in his time of dying,” the Globe cruelly remarked. “The most enthusiastic partisan of Sir John Macdonald would not attempt the hopeless task of defending his political morality,” pronounced a British commentator. Instead, Macdonald’s admirers entombed him in bronze across Canada: Hamilton unveiled the first statue, in 1893; Regina only raised enough funds to erect its joyless John A. in 1967. In Toronto’s Queen’s Park, a round-shouldered Sir John A. Macdonald seems weighed down by his imperial robes of the Order of the Bath. In cities across the country, he stared coldly at a Canada that no longer knew him. Despite five biographies, by 1921 he was “imperfectly, if at all, known” to contemporary Canadians.