- Title: John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada’s 17th Prime Minister
- Author: Steve Paikin
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Publisher: Sutherland House Books
- Pages: 300
John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada's 17th Prime Minister, by Steve PaikinHandout
John Turner left federal politics in 1975 as a superstar and returned, almost nine years later, as an anachronism, leading the Liberal Party to one of its worst electoral defeats. He was on the wrong side of the debate over free trade with the United States, and his leadership was so inept that his own advisers conspired to force his resignation in the midst of the 1988 election. That, at least, is how his life is usually described.
But with John Turner: An Intimate Biography of Canada’s 17th Prime Minister, Steve Paikin corrects that record. The veteran host of TVOntario’s The Agenda has given us an insightful portrait of a powerfully talented but deeply conflicted individual who influenced the story of our country, mostly for the better. He has written a fine book about a fine man.
John Napier Wyndham Turner (he dropped the Wyndham in his 20s) was born into privilege and tragedy. His father, Leonard, died when John was only three; his mother, Phyllis, who deserves a biography of her own, raised two children as a single parent, while becoming the highest-ranking woman in the federal public service, as chief economist to the minister of finance during the Second World War and a fixture of Ottawa’s social scene in the thirties and forties.
Her son was an amalgam of these influences. Despite being a highly intelligent student and then a talented lawyer, a jock who qualified for Canada’s Olympic track team until an injury scuppered that ambition and a blindingly handsome man who dated Princess Margaret, he constantly questioned his self-worth.
“He felt enormous pressure to make something of himself, to be of service to his fellow man in some regard,” Paikin wrote. “At the same time he doubted his ability to do it. It was a contradiction that went to the core of his being: he enjoyed success and privilege, yet he was wracked with insecurity, and a certain sense of fragility, as well.”
Turner arrived in Parliament in the 1962 federal election, when he was 33. By 1965, he was a minister in Lester Pearson’s cabinet; by 1968, he was a candidate for the Liberal leadership, losing to Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who made him justice minister.
One of Turner’s greatest accomplishments was shepherding through Parliament an omnibus bill that Trudeau had introduced when he was justice minister. The legislation – the most far-reaching social and legal reforms in this country’s history – decriminalized homosexual acts, made abortion legal in certain highly restricted circumstances and loosened the rules on divorce, among other measures.
Turner used his formidable skills as a persuader to secure passage despite protests from backbenchers and religious leaders. By 1972, he was finance minister and heir apparent to Trudeau.
But that was the problem. Turner increasingly felt it was time for Trudeau to step down and clear the way for the finance minister to become prime minister. But Trudeau had no intention of stepping down. The two also clashed over fiscal issues.
Beyond that, they never found a way to become friends, and as Paikin wrote, Turner “was the sort of politician who needed to be appreciated,” especially by older and more powerful men – a legacy, perhaps, of never having really known his father. On Sept. 9, 1975, he resigned, with hard feelings on both sides, settling into life as a powerful Bay Street lawyer with his own table at Winston’s, an elite diner.
In 1984, when Trudeau did finally decide it was time to leave, Turner re-entered political life, a prohibitive favourite for the leadership of a party that had become deeply unpopular after 21 years of near-uninterrupted power. But Trudeau loyalist Jean Chrétien fought hard to prevent that coronation. This led to a bitter leadership convention in which Turner placed first, but Chrétien, in the immortal words of party president Iona Campagnolo, placed “second on the ballot, but first in our hearts.”
It took almost no time for everyone to realize that Turner’s skills had atrophied during his years of exile. But there was more to it than political rust. John Turner, the 1960s wunderkind, was now outside his time.
At the first cabinet meeting, Health Minister Monique Bégin was “amazed to discover a prime minister who needed to be loved and surrounded with comradeship, like one sees on television in a male locker room after a great game of hockey,” as she later wrote.
Turner ignited controversy when a television camera caught him patting Campagnolo on the derriere. (She patted him back.) “I’m a very tactile politician,” he explained in defence. In truth he was a man’s man who had personal, though never professional, difficulties with feminism. At truly important gatherings, such as the birthday parties his supporters threw for him, not a single woman would be invited.
When he called an election soon after winning the leadership, the bum-patting incident, a rocky performance in the leaders’ debate, his staccato, throat clearing, rather bug-eyed speaking style and his disastrous decision to appoint 26 Liberal MPs to patronage posts contributed to one of the worst electoral disasters the party ever faced: a rump of only 40 members facing 211 Progressive Conservatives led by prime minister Brian Mulroney.
Pearson had led his party to a similar shellacking in 1958, but successfully rebuilt it, becoming prime minister in 1963. Mr. Turner had no such success.
His opponents saw him as a weak leader, and they were right to the extent that he could never reconcile his internal contradictions. He was personally insecure, and at the same time excessively jockish. Though his socially progressive and fiscally disciplined credentials were impeccable, he failed to offer a coherent governing alternative to the PCs.
A devout Catholic who as a young man had seriously considered entering the priesthood, he swore like a sailor, and drank like one, too. Paikin believes the stress of leadership “may have been enough to make an enthusiastic social drinker cross the line to more self-destructive behaviour.”
Turner’s wife, Geills, was a strong woman who at times intimidated her husband as well as his staff. Several advisers urged him to divorce her, but the couple loved each other in their own way and remained together as husband and wife for more than 57 years.
His greatest problem was the relentless insurgency waged by Chrétien and his supporters: “No leader in Canadian political history can rival Turner as a target of out-and-out coup plotting, disloyalty, chicanery and internecine warfare,” Paikin wrote. “They didn’t stab Turner in the back. They came at him in full view, right from the front.”
In deciding to oppose the North American free-trade agreement that the Mulroney government had negotiated with the United States, and by supporting the Meech Lake agreement that would have recognized Quebec as a distinct society, he split his caucus and the party.
Critics said he would have done better by reversing those positions: opposing Meech and supporting free trade. But as Paikin insightfully reveals, Turner had been arguing since the 1960s that Quebec needed special recognition and provincial governments greater autonomy.
And having scrutinized every jot and tittle of the free-trade accord, Turner became convinced it would fatally undermine Canadian sovereignty. Fighting that agreement became the “cause of my life,” he said, during the 1988 election – his finest hour. He was wracked with back pain; coup plotters tried to force him to step down mid-campaign. And yet he persevered, hammering away at the accord so relentlessly that at one point he moved ahead of Mulroney in the polls.
But the PCs fought back, and in the end, secured a second majority government. Turner’s political life was finished.
After Chrétien realized his long-sought dream of becoming Liberal leader, Turner went back to work as a lawyer and corporate-board director. He contributed to environmental causes and gave speeches. He led the Canadian mission to monitor the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine. (“It was the best thing I ever did,” he declared afterward.)
The annual birthday parties became ever-more elaborate and even began including women. At his 90th, Chrétien paid tribute: “We were good friends,” he said. “But then life decided we should compete.” A lovely moment.
Turner died of congestive heart failure at home on Sept. 19, 2020. He was 91.
There have been other books devoted in whole or in part to John Turner’s life. But none had the access to his personal papers – or to family and friends – given to Paikin. He was a friend and that affection shines through on every page. He fully acknowledges his subject’s weaknesses but defends him as an honourable man who dedicated himself to public service and who made Canada a better place as a result.
Anyone curious about the life and times of the country’s 17th prime minister would do well to read Paikin’s book. It will never be bettered.
John Ibbitson is writer at large at The Globe and Mail. His latest book, The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada, arrives from Signal/McClelland & Stewart in fall 2023.
Expand your mind and build your reading list with the Books newsletter. Sign up today.
John Ibbitson