But only after the Conservatives made a gift of it to King. Laurier said that the 20th century would belong to Canada in point of fact, it mostly belonged to the Liberal Party. Over 54 years, the Liberals had formed the government for only 20. Meighen was the ninth prime minister, all but two of whom were Conservatives. In fact, were it not for Meighen, King - never a particularly sympathetic character - might not have gained, let alone held on to power. The careers of King and Meighen, however, seem almost intertwined. During the Chanak (or Çanak) Crisis of 1922, he urged the King government to recall parliament and ready the troops in aid of Britain King was in no rush to do so and the conflict was over before it had a chance to divide French and English Canadians. Meighen was often decisive, sometimes to his disadvantage. Meighen, however, carried the banner of the old political elites: he was a small-c conservative, an advocate for pre-War values and social relations, and a man who kept wearing starched high collars long after modernists like King disavowed them outside of formal occasions. In this sense, and perhaps ironically, it was King who had the political pedigree. King’s grandfather on his mother’s side was William Lyon Mackenzie, one-time mayor of Toronto, a radical-reform politician and newspaperman, a full-time thorn in the side of the Upper Canadian establishment (aka: the Family Compact), a sometime rabble-rouser, and a prominent leader of the 1837-38 Rebellion. Meighen came from modest roots and was a farm boy. King and Meighen, side by side, offer an insight into how much and how little had changed in Canadian politics. Their temperaments clashed, and so did their ambitions.” was given to wordy platitudes and endless consultations. As Meighen’s biographer writes, “Meighen was a dogged logician and orator who believed in straight talk. The two men, when young and both attending the University of Toronto, knew and disliked each other. He was bright, articulate, a sharp and witty debater, and absolutely loathed by Mackenzie King - a feeling that was returned with interest. He is the only PM elected from Manitoba (his riding was Portage la Prairie) and the first westerner to hold the job. He was as representative as anyone of the extent to which Ontarian legal, professional, educational, and gendered certainties were being transplanted onto the plains. Meighen was raised and educated in Ontario and was part of that great westward migration to Manitoba. He is the only one, as well, to have come from a farming background, a remarkable fact for what was until 1921 a mostly rural country. Meighen was the first Canadian prime minister born in the post-Confederation period. He is, however, worth pondering for a moment. In 1926 he was thrown into the job in the least defensible way and was thereafter (unfairly) associated in the public mind with an attempt to subvert the democratic process.
Meighen himself was barely considered by an electorate eager for change. He failed in 1921 because Canadians were tired of Borden and the Tory/Union government and its cynical manipulation of the 1917 election, angered by the Military Service Bill (of which Meighen was the author), upset about the mess made at Winnipeg in 1919 (in which Meighen played a prominent role as minister of justice and the man behind the anti-sedition amendment to the Criminal Code, Section 98), and peeved about prohibition. Meighen is one of those politicians caught in the cat’s paw of history. Figure 6.14 Arthur Meighen (centre) during his brief stint in the PMO in 1920.
He lost convincingly to William Lyon Mackenzie King in the dying days of 1921. Unelected, Meighen held on for 15 months until an election was unavoidable. He resigned and handed the prime ministership off to Arthur Meighen (1874-1960).
Borden was the author of some of that drama, to be sure, but he never had to defend his record at the polls outside of wartime. 6.7 The Natural Governing Party: The King Yearsīorden departed the prime minister’s office in July 1920, having governed Canada through what is arguably the most dramatic decade in its history.