Wilfrid Laurier

And that really became sort of the cause of his later life.

Even as then Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier was trying to get him back to Canada to serve in important roles.

He was like, no, no, I'm good here in Ireland.

Yeah.

It was all about New Ontario.

It was all about the vision that the governments of this country, led by Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Prime Minister, who was Clerk's close friend and very, very strong advocate, It was the new Ontario that Clerk described as one where governments, through good laws and special grants of wild land, will tempt the capitalist and the manufacturer to establish works for the utilization of these Canadian raw materials, like iron ore and pulp paper.

And then they will have established an agency for immigration more efficacious than a legion of lecturers and a million maps.

Clerg saw New Ontario in the biggest and boldest of colours.

Um, uh, so he served in, uh, the British Parliament as an Irish MP, an Irish nationalist MP, and that really became sort of the cause of his, uh, later life.

Uh, even as, uh, then Prime Minister, uh, Wilfrid Laurier was, uh, trying to get him back to Canada to serve in important roles, he was like, "No, no, I'm, I'm good here in Ireland." [laughs]

We are gonna finish our tour with, if I'm allowed an opinion on this, I think one of my favorite premiers in Ontario history.

Let's go visit him.

And I imagine a lot of the wealth and prosperity will continue to be generated in the West.

If the 2030s shall belong to Western Canada or Western Canadian development, not to bastardize Wilfrid Laurier's saying about 20th century belonging to Canada, what needs to happen to ensure we're not marching toward an even greater national chasm?

Well, one of the important achievements of the School of Public Policy study that was done for the government of Alberta on the economic and fiscal impacts of separation on Alberta, if you look, I think it's pages six and seven, there's about a page and a half there that shows that not only would leaving Canada be bad for Alberta, it would be even worse for Canada.

that Canada, even after the Trudeau decade, the Justin Trudeau decade and all the damage that was done, the rest of Canada, our dollar, our economy, what we have to pay to borrow money, all of Canada benefits from Western Canada's strength.

The formation of Robert Borden's Union government was the catalyst.

The Liberal Party was split in two between Union Liberals, who supported Borden's call for a total mobilization for war, and those in the party who remained loyal to Wilfrid Laurier and opposed conscription.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Party was literally erased and replaced with Union government, an uneasy alliance of convenience between Liberal defectors and Conservatives.

And while the pressures of war were responsible for the scrambling of Canada's traditional partisan politics, peace was unlikely to usher in a return to normalcy.

The sense of betrayal ran deep within Liberal ranks, especially since the split ran along ethnic and geographic lines.

More than at any other time in the history of Canada to that point, the Liberal Party was the party of Quebec.

Those who had stayed loyal to Laurier viewed the Union defectors as beyond forgiveness.

Union Liberals, meanwhile, may have had regrets about joining Robert Borden's government, but none of them questioned the principles that led them to support Canada's war effort to the fullest and by extension, the moral bankruptcy of those who shirked their duty to the country.

Uh, most of the people there wanted one big prairie province that eventually could grow in population, in weight, politically and economically, to be a bit of a counterweight to the big central Canadian provinces.

But, uh, Wilfrid Laurier followed the advice of his local organizer, a guy from Edmonton, Frank Oliver, to split the two provinces, uh, to quote Donald Trump, "with an arbitrary line," an arbitrary border right down the middle, two smaller provinces, with, uh, without the ownership of their mineral resources, with small Senate allocations.

In fact, Alberta has six senators for five million people, and Seamus, your, our friends in Atlantic Canada have 30 senators for two and a half million people.

So these are the kind of structural issues that caused, uh, that were partly the cause of historical Western alienation, together with McDonald's national policy, much of which was carried on by the Laurier government, uh, well into the last century with protectionism, meaning that Western Canadian grain farmers had to buy overpriced manufactured implements, their Massey Ferguson tractors from Ontario producers rather than getting cheaper products from the United States because of tariffs.

Before she was, well, I'm a Miami guy, so go Canes too, but everybody can go together.

And then she was appointed Dean of Faculty of Music at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, just outside of Toronto.

She is, this is new, she is president elect of WASB, which is the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles.

And she is artistic director of the Wellington Wind Symphony and an active member of numerous organizations, including CBD&A, the Conductors Guild, College Music Society, Humanities Education and Research Association, NAFME, ABA, and more.

things that a leader must have, as well as a lot of people skills and relationship building and all that sort of stuff.

But

yeah, I had done a lot of research on Laurier, and congratulations for pronouncing it right, by the way, because usually I have to tell a lot of people in the United States, just think Laurie, the name, and then Canada A, Laurier, and that's how you say it.

Because we get lawyer-er a lot.

He was the first leader of a Canadian political party to be forcefully ejected.

And Wilfrid Laurier resigned as prime minister on this day back in 1911.

And as always, on this day, we aired this episode of Today in Canadian History.

Today in Canadian History is produced by CJSW 90.9 FM in Calgary.