The Masques of Ottawa

Part 1

E-text prepared by Al Haines

Transcriber's note:

"Domino" is the pseudonym of Augustus Bridle (1869-?)

THE MASQUES OF OTTAWA

"DOMINO"

"Wherefore are these things hid?

* * * * *

We will draw the curtain and show you the picture." --SHAKESPEARE.

Toronto: The MacMillan Company of Canada, Ltd., at St. Martin's House. MCMXXI. Copyright, Canada, 1921. By the MacMillan Company of Canada, Limited.

THE PLAY-HOUSE CALLED OTTAWA.

Do not imagine that I spend much time at once in Ottawa. I have never liked the kind of play-house that politicians have made on that glorious plateau in a valley of wonderland with a river of dreams rolling past to the sea. Where under heaven is any other Capital so favoured by the great scenic artist? On what promontory do parliamentary towers and gables so colossally arise to enchant the vision? The Thames draws the ships of the world and crawls muddily and lazily out to sea wondering what haphazard of history ever concentrated so much commerce, politics and human splendour on the banks of one large ditch. Ottawa's house of political drama overlooks one of the noblest rivers in the world, that takes its rise in everlasting hills of granite and pines.

One, Laurier, used to dream that he would devote his declining days to making Ottawa beautiful as a city as she is for the site of a capital. To him as to others, Rome, London, Paris, Vienna, Washington, should all in time be rivalled by Ottawa the magnificent. But the saw-mill surveyors of Ottawa spoiled that when they made no approach to Parliament Hill to compare to the vista seen from the river. Ottawa was built for convenience: for opportunity: for expediency.

Parliament is its great show. Politicians are the actors. Time has seen some interesting, almost baffling, dramas on that hill. No other Parliament stands midway of so vast a country. But there are people who prefer Hull, P.Q., to Ottawa, Ont. We have had some mild Mephistos of strategy up there: some prophets of eloquence: some dreamers of imagination: giants of creative energy scheming how to draw a young, vast country together into nationhood so that the show-men on Parliament Hill might have an audience.

But the Ottawa of to-day is a strange spectacle for the prophets. The great new Opera House is all but finished, when no seer can tell whether the plays to be put on there by the parties of the future will be as epical and worthwhile as those staged by the actors of the past. Imagination was not absent when Ottawa was created. But it needs more than common imagination to foresee whether these political playboys of the northern world are going to be worthy of the great audience soon to arise in the country that converges upon Ottawa.

Sometimes in Parliament you catch the vibration of big momentums in a nation's progress. Voices now and then arise in speech that reflect some greatness of vision. More often the actors are sitting indolently, hearing the clack of worn-out principals whose struts and grimaces and cadences are those of men whose cues should lead them to the dressing rooms, or to the wings, or somewhere into the maze of the back drop where nobody takes part in the show. Or they listen to men whose big informing idea constantly is that all we need to make economic happiness for everybody is to turn out the company now in and get another from the furrows. These latter believe that a nation is a condition of free trade--mainly on behalf of the farmer whose average idea of industry is a blacksmith shop on a farm.

One's head inclines to ache by reason of listening to the three-cornered claque on the Tariff as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. Now and again we are inclined to study the men who are elected to Parliament and some of those who gravitate towards Ottawa without the bother of elections. They stimulate interest and challenge criticism, not less because the interest and the criticism come from a seat in the audience rather than from "behind the scenes"--which is not always a disadvantage. While the parliamentarians perform "Promises and Pie Crusts", the wives have their own play--"Petticoats and Power". The stage here is a triangle--Rideau Hall, Chateau Laurier, the Parliamentary Restaurant. At the cafe tables women from all the counties and electoral districts of Canada--many of them French--chatter about the great masquerade up at the Castle, the little-king show which at its best is worth more to Canada than the Senate. The homes of Ottawa are little shows whose players imitate the manners and the accents of the fine people in the Castle, the Restaurant and the Chateau.

"Nothing but a prinked-up panorama!" says the rugged Radical in a coonskin coat, member of a deputation with a railway ticket as long as his pocket. "Poor show! What we want down here is more plain farmers' wives----"

He pauses. This man's first cousin broke away from the farm a generation ago because farmers' wives were too plain, and farmers did so little reading, and the big thinkers and doers all seemed to live in town. As he talks, up dashes a sleigh, jangling its bells and dangling its robes, and from behind the bearskinned driver alights a company that makes his coonskin coat feel clumsy and uncomfortable. He glances up at the great pile of walls on the hill. The hill is alive with fine people. In one of the sleighs a lady bows and smiles--at him! He touches his cap and takes his pipe from his mouth.

"That lady?" he replies to his sleeping-car mate. "Oh, that is the wife of a Senator, used to live in our town. Clever little woman she is, too. They tell me she's writing a novel and that Lady Byng is taking her up. Lady Byng--oh, yes, she writes novels. Good idea. Likely her books won't be quite so rough as some of our Canadian novels are. I like style in a book, all that fine manners stuff; takes your mind off the humdrum of everyday life. Byng--say, that was a wise appointment if ever there was one. My way of thinking, Lord Byng has 'em all beaten since Dufferin. Kings' and queens' uncles and cousins and brothers don't suit this democratic nation like a man who got acquainted with this country before ever he set eyes on it, through the boys he commanded out yonder. Great man! Fit to be Governor-General of a great country, and I won't deny it. No snobbery. Seventh son of an earl, all his life a soldier and a worker. A real man, such as any of us could present to our constituents with pleasure and pride. Tell you what--listen!"

His sleeping-car mate feels a heavy clutch on his arm.

"Remember the old debate we used to have about 'The pen is mightier than the sword'? Well, say--when you get the pen and the sword united in one outfit--what about it? Oh, it's a great show, sure enough. I used to think government was a plain, plugshot business of trade statistics, card indexes and ledgers. But I've come to the conclusion that this old town has to make it a good bit of a social compromise and a show, or it can't be carried on, no matter who does it."

CONTENTS

THE UNELECTED PREMIER OF CANADA-- RT. HON. ARTHUR MEIGHEN

THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN PREMIER-- RT. HON. SIR ROBERT BORDEN

A POLITICAL SOLAR SYSTEM-- RT. HON. SIR WILFRID LAURIER

THE GRANDSON OF A PATRIOT-- HON. WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE KING

NUMBER ONE HARD-- HON. T. A. CRERAR

THE PREMIER WHO MOWED FENCE CORNERS-- HON. E. C. DRURY

Part 2

EZEKIEL AT A LEDGER-- RT. HON. SIR GEORGE FOSTER

A HALO OF BILLIONS-- RT. HON. SIR THOMAS WHITE

CALLED TO THE POLITICAL PULPIT-- HON. NEWTON WESLEY ROWELL

AN AUTOCRAT FOR DIVIDENDS-- BARON SHAUGHNESSY

THE PUBLIC SERVICE HOBBYIST-- SIR HERBERT AMES

THE SHADOW AND THE MAN-- HON. SIR SAM HUGHES

THE STEREOPTICON AND THE SLIDE-- LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR ARTHUR CURRIE

A COAT OF MANY COLOURS-- SIR JOHN WILLISON

WHATSOEVER THY HAND FINDETH-- SIR JOSEPH FLAVELLE, BART.

NO FATTED CALVES FOR PRODIGAL SONS-- HON. SIR HENRY DRAYTON

THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN RAILROADING-- EDWARD WENTWORTH BEATTY

A BOURGEOIS MASTER OF QUEBEC-- HON. SIR LOMER GOUIN

A POLITICAL MATTAWA OF THE WEST-- JOHN WESLEY DAFOE

HEADMASTER OF THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL-- MICHAEL CLARK, M.P.

THE SPHINX FROM SASKATCHEWAN-- HON. J. A. CALDER

A TRUE VOICE OF LABOUR-- TOM MOORE

THE MAN WITHOUT A PUBLIC-- SIR WILLIAM MACKENZIE

THE IMPERIAL BRAINSTORM-- BARON BEAVERBROOK

CONCLUSION

THE MASQUES OF OTTAWA

THE UNELECTED PREMIER OF CANADA

RT. HON. ARTHUR MEIGHEN

Once only have I encountered Rt. Hon. Arthur Meighen, Premier of Canada by divine right, not as yet by election. I was the 347th person with whom he shook hands and whom he tried to recognize that afternoon. His weary but peculiarly winning smile had scarcely flickered to rest for a moment in an hour. For the eleven seconds that it was my privilege to be individually sociable with him, he did his best to say what might suit the case. He seemed much like a worn-out precocious boy, of great wisdom and much experience, suddenly prodded into an eminence which as yet he scarcely understood.

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