William Lyon Mackenzie King, the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s to the 1940s, was fond of going to the “moving pictures.” No doubt, he would have thoroughly enjoyed Colin Firth’s stellar Oscar-nominated performance as King George VI in the film The King’s Speech. A keen observer of British high society, few things gave King more pleasure than being in the company of the royals on his various trips overseas.
The Canadian prime minister had gingerly tiptoed around the 1936-37 abdication crisis that brought George VI to the throne in place of his older brother, Edward VIII, and ensured that any public statements were vague enough, lest Canada be blamed for making the constitutional crisis worse. Ultimately, he quietly supported the British government’s position that Edward had to abdicate if he married Wallis Simpson.
In May of 1937, King was in London to attend George’s coronation (held on May 12) and for high-level meetings on the increasingly tense state of European affairs. On the evening of May 25, he was invited to a dinner given by British prime minister Stanley Baldwin and his wife at 10 Downing St. in honour of the new King and Queen. To King’s great satisfaction, the who’s who of the British political establishment were in attendance.
After dinner, King and Australian prime minister Joseph Lyons were able to chat privately with His Majesty. A few days earlier, King had given a reading during a service at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and George was most complimentary. “He said I had done very well,” King later recorded in his diary about the conversation. “He thought it must have been a very difficult business to speak in the Cathedral. I told him about having had this frightful cold and really overcome it largely by saying that if he, the King, could go through all he had gone through, that I ought to be able to manage to get through with the reading. … He seemed pleased at this remark and then began to tell Lyons and myself how a doctor in Australia [Lionel Logue] who had taken two years to reach him, had taught him how to speak. He meant to overcome his stammering.”
On the occasion of George’s royal tour to Canada in 1939, King wrote in his diary about His Majesty’s tremendous public speaking progress. George was requested to say a few words at the inaugural luncheon in Quebec City. “I thought he did exceedingly well,” King noted, “and was immediately pleased to see how he had mastered his infirmity of speech. While he paused a little before some of the words, he really did not stammer at all. His lips trembled one or two times but was quite splendid the way in which he got through.”
A few days later, George unveiled the War Memorial in Ottawa. In typical fashion, King fussed about every detail of the ceremony and worried that his actions might have upset George. But again, His Majesty handled himself remarkably well. “[He] spoke with the greatest possible ease, very fluently, a littler faster than he usually does but without any hesitation whatever excepting over the word ‘sea’ and the word ‘Canada.’ … Nothing could have been finer than the way in which the King spoke.”
Near the end of the tour, the prime minister accompanied the King and Queen to Washington. King was awestruck by the performance of both George and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt at the official dinner. “The King got through his remarks with hardly any hesitation,” he wrote in his diary. “I shall never forget that evening, and seeing these two men, each of whom have achieved greatness through overcoming physical infirmity. The King having mastered himself completely by overcoming his stammering, and the President by overcoming infantile paralysis.”
Once the Second World War had ended, King had another quiet moment with George in London. “I thought the King looked very well,” the prime minister wrote. “He had gained in force and strength. He remembers incidents of the past well and is remarkably free in his speech from any stammering. He spoke with some interest and enthusiasm of the time he had getting off to Scotland when the change of government took place and of having to make the speech from the throne in the afternoon and a broadcast of it at night.”
On King’s final visit to London as prime minister in the fall of 1948, he became ill and was forced to stay in bed at the Dorchester Hotel. A parade of visitors made the pilgrimage to his room to wish him well. Among the more prominent was King George, who came to gossip and reminisce with one of his favourite Canadian leaders. The prime minister was naturally touched and delighted.
Winnipeg historian Allan Levine’s next book is By the Hand of Destiny: The Life of William Lyon Mackenzie King, Canada’s Greatest and Most Peculiar Prime Minister.
