This summer the National Trust for Canada is hosting Every Place Communicates a Story Photo Challenge Contest and invite Canadians to capture historic places through their camera lens.
I will have a link to where you can learn more about the contest in my show notes.
The contest got me thinking about the John and Olive Diefenbaker House in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
It is a National Historic Site and was the home of our 13th prime minister for 50 years.
But long before he reached the highest office in the land, there was a woman travelling ahead of him into prairie towns.
She gathered local stories, edited speeches, drove him to meetings, and helped transform a shy lawyer into the political force of nature he became.
Sadly, she never got to see him take office and was relegated to becoming a footnote in his story.
I’m Craig Baird and this is Canadian History Ehx.
And today, I’m putting a schoolteacher from Saskatchewan in the spotlight to shine a light on a woman who helped build a political legend.
This is… Grace, Service, and Strength: The Edna Diefenbaker Story [PAUSE]
In the 1970s, John Diefenbaker wrote a three-volume memoir about his life.
In total there were 937 pages.
And do you know how many times he mentions his first wife Edna?
Three times.
So, let’s change that…
Her story began at the dawn of European colonization of North America.
Edna Brower was of Dutch heritage, her paternal ancestors settled in New Amsterdam, now New York, in 1630.
Her maternal ancestry was Norwegian, and they arrived in Canada in the mid-1800s.
Her father Chauncey grew up in Kingston, Ontario but dreamed of eventually going west to live the life of the adventurers he read so much about.
In May 1869, when he was only 15, he threw his schoolbooks in a hedge and left Kingston forever to wander around Western North America for a decade.
His parents never saw him again. By 1880, he was in Fargo, North Dakota where he met a young woman by the name of Maren.
The two fell in love, and on Nov. 18, 1882, they married.
The couple quickly moved north to Manitoba and from 1884 to 1890, they had four sons.
One of them, William, tragically died in 1893 while playing outside on a very hot day. Doctors diagnosed him with brain fever, which is what we would call heat stroke today.
Soon after William’s death, another son, Jack, was born.
At the time they lived in Wawanesa, Manitoba.
Their neighbour, Lelita Mooney, often helped babysit the Brower children with her granddaughter Nellie.
Nellie Mooney grew up to become Nellie McClung.
And if that name sounds familiar it’s because she led the campaign to get women the right to vote in Alberta and Manitoba.
She was also one of The Famous Five who fought The Persons Case in the late-1920s.
In 1899, another child entered the Brower family and this time it was a girl.
On Nov. 30, of that year Edna Brower was born.
As the only daughter in the family, Edna was the apple of her mother’s eye.
From the moment she was born, her mother made her clothing that was fit for a prairie princess.
Throughout her youth, she wore wonderfully made outfits, styled in the latest fashion.
Her father also did his part to make Edna feel special.
He built her custom furniture, including a chair built smaller than the others so it would better fit her slight frame.
She adored that chair, made it her throne from which she watched her brothers wrestle around the living room.
By all accounts, she was happy.
But that was all nearly cut short in the winter of 1901-02 The young child had spent hours in her chair with the family cat Fluffy f but each day she seemed to grow weaker.
Edna was not herself.
Her parents consulted a doctor, who couldn’t find anything physically wrong with her.
He advised them to get rid of Fluffy because of an old superstition that cats drained the energy from children.
First, they took the cat off Edna’s lap, but each time she got up to get her furry friend.
If she didn’t, the cat ran back to her arms anyways.
One night, while Edna slept, Fluffy was taken from her for good.
Edna was crushed at the loss and desperately searched for Fluffy for days.
It was to no avail.
By the spring, Edna’s condition began to improve, and she returned to her old self.
No one knew what exactly caused her sudden decline, or the rebirth of her energy.
I can tell you what didn’t either….
Fluffy so let’s take a minute here….
Justice for Fluffy.
With the mystery illness behind her and while keeping Fluffy in her heart Edna resumed her childhood where she was known to make quick friends out of anyone in the neighbourhood.
It wasn’t unusual for her to walk up to a stranger, say “Hi I’m Edna” and then hug their leg or shake their hand.
In 1903, the family moved west to a farm on a homestead near Saskatoon.
Edna fell in love with the area almost immediately.
The freedom of the wide-open skies and the train that would slow down as it crossed the land.
Because there was a steep grade on the property, the train had to slow down, giving Edna and her brothers a chance to jump on for a quick, and free, ride into Saskatoon.
She also developed a love of horses and rode one to school whenever she could.
Her favorite thing to do was to break a horse, once she managed to get them under control she would gallop from farm to farm. Gladys Young was friends with Edna during that time.
“Edna was just full of fun, wide awake, an all-round person.”
When Edna finished school, her options were limited because she was a woman.
But she was outgoing, and friendly and being a teacher would be a perfect fit.
She trained at the Normal School which is now called the E.A. Davies Building in Saskatoon.
For over four decades, it served as a teacher-training centre from which thousands of teachers entered classrooms across the province and Edna was one of them.
She graduated and became a teacher in a one-room school northwest of Saskatoon.
Edna was away from her family and just 18 years old when she entered Highworth School, but she was happy.
Her students remembered her for her kindness, her smile and how well she dressed.
Highworth was followed by the Rosetown Public School in southwest Saskatchewan where she was joined by her friend Helen Lawrence.
One of Edna’s students, Margaret Shaw, remembered them well.
“They were real party girls. They lived in a hotel room and when they leaned out the window, the boys gathered underneath like flies. They loved fun and were just bubbling with it all the time.”
In late-1919, Edna was offered a job at the Mayfair School in Saskatoon.
On Feb. 1, 1920, she had her first day and just like before she immediately became popular with staff and students alike.
She dreamed up innovative projects to stimulate interest in the classroom and broaden the kids horizons.
Edna also got the attention of men.
In Saskatoon, she had many suitors wanting to marry her, but she turned all of them down until around1926, when Eddie Burke asked and she accepted.
He was described as fashionable, handsome, and one of the most eligible bachelors in Saskatoon.
Eddie owned a car dealership and presented Edna with a large diamond ring.
During their engagement she met a young lawyer named John Diefenbaker.
Intelligent, somewhat handsome and extremely driven, John had recently broken off his engagement to a woman named Beth Newell.
The two had been close to marriage when Beth contracted tuberculosis just before Christmas 1924.
Beth told John about her illness, and he made a date to meet her at the Five Corners in Saskatoon which was within walking distance for John.
Beth, however, would have to take three street cars, and two transfers, to meet him, but she made the trek to her beloved.
She waited all night for John to show up but he never did.
He never called her again and she died months later.
OOOF not a great look for old Diefenbaker….
Two years later in 1926 when John and Edna crossed paths, he was already engaged to a new woman but that didn’t stop them from chatting.
Then, they bumped into each other at the train station or at dances, and every time they stopped to chat as the conversations lingered longer and longer.
No one knows exactly when the couple became serious but by mid-1927, their growing friendship crossed into romance.
Edna realized she was in love with John and it didn’t help that Eddie was often away on business so by late 1927 she broke things off with her fiancé.
He took it well, telling her to keep the ring because he only wanted her to be happy.
He said he would love her until the day he died. He meant it too. He never married and died a bachelor.
As for John, he showed a pattern that was repeating…
He ended his relationship without a word of apology or remorse.
First, he ghosted, then he was cold and eventually he wrote out Edna from his story…
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Meanwhile, Edna’s friends were perplexed.
They couldn’t understand why she would be with John.
She was outgoing and friendly, while he was introverted and aloof.
What concerned them the most was that he had an air of arrogance that made it difficult for people to like him.
One friend, Molly Connell, said,
“His eyes, they just bored right through you. There was never any tenderness or warmth about John Diefenbaker.”
Her friends often referred to her as Ted, a nickname she had for years. When John heard it, he demanded they stop it.
Despite her friend’s concerns Edna married John on June 29, 1929, and because she was now a wife, she had to quit her job as a teacher.
She would soon have a new role.
John’s political cheerleader.
Soon after their wedding, Edna moved in with John.
She left her friends behind and traveled north to Prince Albert where he had his law practice.
She made friends quickly. Her husband was a staunch Conservative with little love for Liberals, but Edna was strictly non-partisan in her friendships.
When she arrived, she met and became close friends with Betty Davis. Her husband, Ted, was a newspaper reporter respected for his impartiality.
While the couple got along great with Edna, John refused to speak to them because he didn’t like Ted’s editorials.
Betty said,
“We would meet John and Edna on our way down to dinner in the hotel. Edna would always stop to chat. John would look right past us and keep walking. Edna would walk with us, always friendly and warm, and John would be walking ahead by himself.”
Despite his abrasive personality, Edna was deeply in love with John.
She saw past that hard exterior to the caring man underneath.
Even if that caring side was hard to find.
John loved Edna as well but there seemed to be two things he loved more.
First, his mother.
She had always prioritized him, while ignoring John’s tender-hearted father.
As a result, John nearly always put his mother ahead of his wife.
If she needed him, he would drop Edna to see her, and she was no fan of Edna’s and treated her like a guest in her own home when she came to visit.
The second thing John loved more than Edna, was himself.
And he had always been s set on a political career.
In 1920, he ran for village council of Wakaw, Saskatchewan and was elected to a three-year term.
Five years later when he was living in Prince Albert, Diefenbaker ran in his first federal election He finished in third place, almost 2,000 votes behind the winner.
A Liberal.
Only one year later in a by-election, he once again attempted to get to Parliament.
This time he was running against Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
He lost that election too.
Fun fact, that 1926 election in Prince Albert was the only time in Canadian history that two prime ministers, former, current or future, ran in the same riding.
As you know… all those losses didn’t stop John
And 20 days leading up to his wedding he lost again in the Saskatchewan election to the incumbent Thomas Davis.
Remember how Edna’s friends didn’t like him.
Well, it was a wider problem.
John Diefenbaker was not super likeable. He was loud, rude and arrogant.
We know that John Diefenbaker made a lot of mistakes.
Starting with being kind of awful to his exes… but also
*cough cough* Avro Arrow *cough cough*
But one thing he got right was marrying Edna because she became his political tipping point.
Edna told John that he could win office, but he had to change.
She edited John’s speeches to help tone down his rhetoric.
And told him that he couldn’t be abrasive with voters.
She encouraged him to be socially conscious and as much as he despised it.
That meant he had to network and mix with people at events.
When he spoke at events in the area, Edna drove while John sat in the backseat going over his notes.
She would also mingle and meet people and use her outgoing and likeable nature to learn about issues and then relay those to John to help him be more relatable.
His opening remark even came from her. At each stop, he said,
“Meet my chauffeur! She may kill me before the election with her speed, but she is a wonderful driver.”
Without Edna, John’s Man of the People persona would have never developed.
But it came at a cost.
Edna had always wanted children.
But John wanted a political career without any quote unquote brats to take her focus away from him.
She played tennis, badminton and other sports, but with him she stayed at home because he wanted nothing to do with any of those things.
She only socialized like she used to when he was away, that is until. He summoned her to him wherever that might be. Then she had to drop everything to be at his side.
Some of John’s friends began to believe that Edna refused to let her husband out of her sight when in truth it was the other way around.
Her influence and efforts came to fruition in 1933, when John ran to be the mayor of Prince Albert.
He still lost but the margin was smaller, only 30 votes.
He was gaining ground.
Five years later, he attempted to win a seat in the Saskatchewan Legislature.
He lost again, but this time by only 190 votes.
By1940 Edna’s hard work finally paid off when John won a seat in Parliament.
His dream of a successful political career was finally coming true, and Edna was making it happen.
The Diefenbakers were going to Ottawa.
John and Edna boarded a train for Ottawa on May 13, 1940.
Shortly after their departure from Prince Albert, John retired to their room while Edna went around meeting people.
She introduced herself to a man who was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
When James Sinclair told her he was also headed to Ottawa to work for the government, she responded,
“My husband will be of great assistance to you because he is going to be prime minister.”
Sinclair was immediately charmed by her.
And here’s another point that shows that Canadian history is interconnected like a web…James Sinclair had a daughter named Margaret. She married a hot shot lawyer named Pierre Trudeau and became the mother to Justin Trudeau
When Edna arrived in Ottawa, she was still by John’s side as often as she could be.
Most days you could find her in the visitor’s gallery at the House of Commons.
While on Parliament Hill she forged friendships with the press gallery, which helped get John’s national coverage in newspapers and on radio.
Before long, other Members of Parliament fell under her spell two including members of all parties, who didn’t like John, but loved Edna.
Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King even said that if he had met Edna before John, he would have married her instead.
It seemed that no door was ever closed to Edna.
Everywhere she went in Ottawa she was welcomed and was John Diefenbaker’s biggest cheerleader…. until…. She wasn’t.
By 1945, something was beginning to change in John and Edna’s relationship.
She was now in her mid-40s, perimenopause was upon her and with it came a depression she could not explain.
When Parliament was not in session, Edna would return home and spend time walking alone on rural roads.
When she visited her mother, they conversed quietly in a locked room.
By the time the federal election campaign began in April 1945, she was still John’s chauffeur to meetings and speaking events, but she wasn’t feeding him information or softening his image.
She did not speak to him about her feelings, but she resented that he seemed oblivious to her depression.
She was plagued with anxiety, and hair loss which she covered with fashionable hats.
Crowds started to bother her as well, but John still insisted she be by his side on the campaign trail.
John won his riding in the June 1945 election, and Edna returned to Ottawa with him to see the opening of the 20th Canadian Parliament.
She attended some events and then, quite simply, vanished from the social scene.
In the search for answers Edna went to visit a doctor friend in Saskatoon, who sent her to a specialist in Toronto.
On Sept. 24, 1945, Edna was admitted to the Homewood Sanitorium in Guelph.
When people asked John about Edna, he was elusive and gave half answers but never told the truth.
In the 1940s, and even today, there is a stigma attached to a mental health crisis.
Of course, part of his secrecy was tied to his first love and priority.
His political career.
He feared how it would look if people found out that his wife was in a mental health facility.
At Homewood, Edna was prescribed shock treatment, which she refused but John ignored her wishes and she received between 10 to 14 shock treatments during the five months in treatment.
Finally, on March 24, 1946, Edna returned home.
As soon as she did, John dropped the bombshell on her.
He wanted to have a child.
Edna was flabbergasted at the suggestion considering he was 50, and she was 46.
She said,
“For goodness sake John, start a family at our age! If we did not have children when we were young, we certainly will not have them now.”
On the outside, John and Edna projected their image of a happy couple but behind closed doors their marriage was fractured.
It’s hard to come back from your partner allowing shock treatment against your consent but just like she had before Edna was by his side during Parliamentary sessions to help John as much as she could in 1948, he attempted to win the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party, as Edna mixed and mingled with people to help his cause.
She made friends, and made people feel welcome.
Unfortunately, John remained rude and awkward, and finished a distant second to George Drew.
A year later, John went into his third federal election.
Edna helped but by this point she did not care if he was re-elected or not.
And yet… he won once again.
It would be the last of his victories that Edna would witness.
In 1950, following the death of former Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, Edna started to feel like something was off.
It started with her eyes.
She had difficulty reading.
Before long, a general fatigue that she could not shake settled in.
She visited a doctor while they were in Washington D.C. at a conference.
He confirmed the worst.
She had leukemia and had limited time to live.
Edna accepted the diagnosis with calm and bravery.
Her biggest worry was John.
On Nov. 9, the couple departed for a trip to Vancouver as a layover for John who would continue on to New Zealand, Australia and eventually Hawaii.
Edna was to join him in Hawaii in late-December.
She packed believing she would not return to her Prince Albert home.
The couple parted ways with a hug in Vancouver.
During Edna’s stay she was diagnosed with acute leukemia that was progressing quickly
So, on Dec. 19, 1950, she traveled to St. Paul’s Hospital in Saskatoon and John cut his trip short to be with Edna.
At the hospital, the couple spent their last Christmas together.
As news spread that Edna was terminally ill, well wishes, flowers and cards came in from across Canada.
Nearly every premier, Member of Parliament and even Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent sent something.
Farmers, railway porters, waiters on trains and waitresses from the House of Commons, all did the same.
They all remembered the kind and charming woman who stood at the side of the gruff and angry man.
In the Press Gallery in the Centre Block of Parliament, a box labelled “For Edna” was stuffed with money to buy flowers and cards.
Even as death approached, Edna helped John’s career.
In January 1951, while in hospital, a man named Alfred Atherton visited her.
His son, Jack Atherton, was a telegraph operator with Canadian National Railway.
When two trains collided near Canoe River, British Columbia on Nov. 21, 1950, Jack was blamed for not giving a vital message to the locomotives.
Police charged him with manslaughter.
Alfred said there was evidence that his son had relayed the telegraph message accurately and that he was being used as a scapegoat in the crash.
He had already approached John, but he was turned down.
When John came to visit Edna, she told him about Alfred and JackJohn said he sympathized, but he could not take the case.
Edna replied that she had already accepted on his behalf.
She never got to see the resolution to the case.
A few weeks later on Feb. 7, 1951, at 5:17 a.m., Edna died.
John went to British Columbia to represent Jack Atherton as his trial on May 9, 1951.
In the end John won an acquittal for his client and the case became national news which caused John’s fame to skyrocket.
That began a groundswell of positivity for John because it helped him win the Progressive Conservatives leadership in 1956, followed by the federal election in1957.
Edna never saw John’s ascension to Prime Minister.
But without her, he never would have made it.
Two years after Edna’s death, John married Olive Freeman.
Like Edna, she became a political asset She was by his side while he was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963.
After she died in 1976, she was buried in Ottawa.
Three years later, John Diefenbaker died.
As his body was transported by train to Saskatoon for burial, Olive’s casket was removed from its resting place and moved too.
No one other than Diefenbaker and his closest advisors knew that John and Olive would be buried next to each other on a spot overlooking the South Saskatchewan River.
A few kilometres away from there Edna is buried in the Diefenbaker family plot.
Her casket was placed at the feet of the mother-in-law who despised her, and four feet deeper than any of the other caskets.
The plan was that when John died, his body would be placed over top of hers but that didn’t happen.
Instead, John’s brother Elmer took his place The only indication that she is buried there is the large grey headstone that includes her name among those buried in the family plot.
On that headstone, nearly faded with time, are the words: “1901 Edna May 1951.”
They didn’t even get her birth year right.
*sources*
- City of Saskatoon: https://www.saskatoon.ca/sites/default/files/documents/community-services/parks/woodlawn-cemetary/general-information/DIEFENBAKER.pdf
- Diefenbaker Canada Centre: https://diefenbaker.usask.ca/exhibits/online-exhibits-content/one-canada/section-1.php
- Kingston Whig Standard: https://www.thewhig.com/opinion/the-unelected-power-behind-diefenbaker
- The Other Mrs. Diefenbaker by Simma Holt
