Who Was John Diefenbaker?

Doubts may be entertained as to the conservative leanings of the Conservative leader and prime minister of Canada at the time of “The Gordon Incident”.  The following facts and incidents raise uncertainty about John George Diefenbaker.
 

1959  Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker opens diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1959, defying the American trade embargo.
 

1969  An account of the first public protest launched by the Edmund Burke Society on November 7th, 1969, against the celebration of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution at the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa contains a description of Diefenbaker arriving for the festivities:

The saddest moment of the night involved a one-time hero to Canadian anti­communists.  In his dotage, huge and magnificent in his dark blue suit, stood the man from Prince Albert, John Diefenbaker.  His presence hurt and angered us.  Perhaps, he was involved in some private attempt to wring concessions from the Russians for those behind the Iron Curtain.  We cannot judge him, but we let him hear our vocal disapproval.  He smiled and waved to us in a friendly way.  An enigma — it’s hard to know what to make of his behaviour.

— “Demonstration: Ottawa November 7” in Straight Talk!, Volume II Number 3, De­cem­ber 1969

 

1970  In his article, “Gouzenko Felt Cheated”, Toronto Sun, June 14th, 1970, Douglas Fisher (ironically, himself likely a red), Diefenbaker is named as just one of several leaders of the federal government who ignored the squelch placed on the Gouzenko revelations:

The government issue was more turgid.  They had been very disappointed that during the years of the Diefenbaker government, they had had no more recognition.  No one had come round to hear their arguments that there had been a massive cover up within the senior Ottawa bureaucracy, organized as they saw it by Lester Pearson and Norman Robertson (clerk of the Privy Council during the spy uproar).
 
The Gouzenkos were convinced that several mandarins in the highest positions in the land were being protected by the ban against revealing all the documentation Igor had brought to the government and the subsequent proceedings of the Taschereau inquiry.

 

1979  A draft article by journalist Peter Worthington relates that Diefenbaker was among those who squelched the RCMP’s Featherbed File:

Operation Featherbed, a 14-year RCMP investigation into suspected subversives in high places, tried to warn the federal government it was being systematically infiltrated.

But the governments of John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson, and Pierre Trudeau dismissed the Featherbed warnings as unsubstantiated Communist witch-hunting.

Besides, it would have been too embarrassing to repudiate people their governments had promoted to positions of influence.

Featherbed suspected that Communist infiltration of the federal bureaucracy had been set in train in 1923 with the co-option of O.D. Skelton, renowned as the “father of the civil service”.

Commentary:  A defector from the Soviet Embassy, who risked his life and that of his family, is telling you there’s a ring; and these three men are suppressing it.  All prime ministers, and two clear Communists among them (Pearson and Trudeau).  Moreover, the man in charge of Gouzenko, his boss, was recalled to the USSR after the defection, and died “of a heart attack”.  Obviously, they killed him.  So pay no attention to the defector!
 

Comments are closed.