Tomorrow is the birthday of Canada's forgotten prime minister. Our avuncular postwar leader, Louis Stephen St. Laurent, was born Feb. 1, 1882, in Compton, in Quebec's Eastern Townships. Despite his lack of profile, however, St. Laurent's tenure as prime minister seems particularly relevant these days.
Strangely, Canada's sixth-longest-serving prime minister has been largely forgotten by the public and history. St. Laurent does not even warrant his own chapter in Michael Bliss's 1994 book, Right Honourable Men. In just one of the book's oddities, St. Laurent, prime minister for nearly 10 years from 1948 to 1957, wallows ignominiously in the obscurity of the book's index, sandwiched between "Spicer, Keith" and "St. Mary's, Ont.," while Arthur Meighen, PM for 240 days, shares his own chapter with R. B. Bennett.
Some measure of respect is gained from the fact that J. L. Granatstein and Norman Hillmer in their 1999 book, Ranking Canada's Prime Ministers, classified St. Laurent as a "near great" former prime minister, trailing only the inestimable John A. Macdonald, Wilfrid Laurier and W. L. Mackenzie King.
St. Laurent understood the need for a strong military and he gave Canada a solid position in NATO when it was formed in 1949. Granted, this was during the height of the Cold War, but St. Laurent's vision of Canada's military role could well be revisited in today's Ottawa.
After participating in the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, Canadian troops have had to withdraw because our military strength is too emasculated to support sustained action. We are a joke in Washington. Louis St. Laurent kept Canada properly outfitted for challenges to our security, responded assertively to the crisis in Korea in 1950, and had the ear of the American president. The Chrétien government has egregiously squandered this reputation.
St. Laurent looked after the guns and the butter. In 1951, he appointed the Massey Commission on the Arts, Letters and Sciences, and the result raised the awareness of Canadians to the limp state of the country's culture. What followed was a flurry of activity, including the creation of the Canada Council in 1957 (admittedly after some reticence on St. Laurent's part), increased funding for universities, and the establishment of the National Library. Would that such a vision for renewal existed today.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg for St. Laurent, whose legislative achievements no government since has come close to matching. It included "big vision" items such as the provision of financial assistance for the construction of the Trans-Canada Highway, and the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority to build that great project, not to mention bringing Newfoundland into Confederation in 1949, a success he brought about largely as minister of external affairs in Mackenzie King's last government. These were lasting achievements.
St. Laurent may not have been the flashiest prime minister; he did not have the flamboyance of Pierre Trudeau or the fiery repartee of John Diefenbaker, and he was prone to falling into a funk (perhaps even depression).
But he was a class act. Louis St. Laurent combined intelligence, integrity, honour and industry to give Canada some of the best government it has ever had.
"He clearly was not interested in power or the exercise of power," wrote former clerk of the Privy Council, J. W. Pickersgill, in his memoir, My Years with Louis St. Laurent (he also served in St. Laurent's cabinet). "St. Laurent, unlike most leaders, felt secure in his position and was not preoccupied with any conscious effort to retain office or with any fear of surrounding himself with able men who might become rivals."
In Louis St. Laurent's service to Canada is a lesson for all future -- and present -- prime ministers. J. D. M. Stewart teaches Canadian history at The Bishop Strachan School in Toronto.