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History Post-confederation (1867-)

Power, Prime Ministers and the Press

The Battle for Truth on Parliament Hill

by (author) Robert Lewis

Publisher
Dundurn Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2018
Category
Post-Confederation (1867-), Canadian, Editors, Journalists, Publishers
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781459742642
    Publish Date
    Oct 2018
    List Price
    $24.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781459742666
    Publish Date
    Oct 2018
    List Price
    $11.99
  • Downloadable audio file

    ISBN
    9781459747937
    Publish Date
    Oct 2020
    List Price
    $34.99

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Description

An intimate history of the journalists who covered Canadian history, and made some of their own.

The history of the press gallery is rich in anecdotes about the people on Parliament Hill who have covered 23 prime ministers and 42 elections in the past 150 years.

Mining the archives and his own interviews, Robert Lewis turns the spotlight on the watchers, including reporters who got too close to power and others who kept their distance.

The Riel Rebellion, the Pacific Scandal, two world wars, the Depression, women's liberation, Quebec separatism, and terrorism are all part of the sweeping background to this lively account of how the news gets made, manipulated, and, sometimes mangled. Since Watergate, press gallery coverage has become more confrontational — a fact, Lewis argues, that fails Canadian democracy.

About the author

Robert Lewis spent twelve years as a Parliamentary correspondent and seven years as Maclean’s editor-in-chief. He has also been the vice president of content development at Rogers Media, and he is a former chair of the Canadian Journalism Foundation. He lives in Toronto.

Robert Lewis' profile page

Awards

  • Long-listed, RBC Taylor Prize

Excerpt: Power, Prime Ministers and the Press: The Battle for Truth on Parliament Hill (by (author) Robert Lewis)

Chapter One: In the Beginning

On Wednesday, November 6, 1867, official Ottawa was abuzz with excitement. A nineteen-gun salute from the Ottawa Field Battery greeted Viscount Charles Stanley Monck, the forty-eight-year-old governor general, as he arrived to preside over the first session of the new nation’s Parliament. After the formalities of swearing in MPs and the Cabinet ended, Sir John A. Macdonald, the fifty-three-year-old prime minister picked by Monck for the role, moved the appointment of the first speaker of the House. Seconding the motion was Macdonald’s seatmate, Sir George-Étienne Cartier. Then, Joseph Dufresne, the Quebec Conservative MP from Montcalm, rose in his seat and, addressing the House in French, protested the election of Honourable James Cockburn of Northumberland West. In the words of the Toronto Globe the next day, Dufresne complained, “the gentleman could not speak the French language. He thought it was to be regretted that, at the inauguration of the new system, greater respect was not shown to Lower Canada in this matter. He looked upon this as a matter of national feeling.” Without further discussion, the House then went about its business in English. Along with the report, the Globe, a partisan Liberal outlet in its day, used an adjacent column in the November 7 paper to condemn Macdonald for using the speaker’s office as a reward for a loyal but unpromising follower.

So much for a smooth start for the first Parliament.

The Globe report was significant: it affirmed the vital role of the press gallery in national affairs, since there were no official records of debates — known as Hansard — until 1875. Indeed, the Parliamentary Press Gallery is as old as Confederation. While the great fire of 1916 that razed the Parliament Buildings destroyed most of the official records, the first volume of the House of Commons Journals mentions the “reporters’ room.” In 1872 the Canadian Illustrated News carried artist Edward Jump’s sketch of the press gallery in the Commons. In fact, pre-Confederation reporters covering the Parliament of Upper Canada actually worked out of the still-under-construction Parliament Buildings in 1866 — an anniversary the press gallery marked with the publication of a retrospective, Sharp Wits &Busy Pens, in May 2016.

The tradition of covering legislatures dates back to the colonial days. John Bushell published the first issue of his Halifax Gazette in 1752. Quebec’s pioneering paper, La Gazette, appeared in 1764. Journalists had reported on political debates in Quebec City since 1792 and established La Tribune de la Presse Québécoise on November 18, 1871. .tienne Parent, the young intellectual who was the guiding spirit of the nationaliste paper Le Canadien, later served as a senior Cabinet official for the Province of Canada, moving as the seat of government shifted among Kingston, Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec City between 1843 and 1859 — and submitting occasional articles to his paper. Other pre-Confederation journalists led the fight for press freedoms and reform. William Lyon Mackenzie, destined to mount the Upper Canada Rebellion against the Family Compact, wrote in his Colonial Advocate: “Wherever the press is not free, the people are poor, abject, degraded slaves.”

Halifax editor Joseph Howe of the Novascotian, George Brown of the Globe, and Parent were among the influential journalists who later played strong, controversial political roles in shaping Canada. Of the ninety-eight-member Province of Canada delegation attending the Charlottetown Conference in 1864, twenty-three were journalists. As educator George Grant observed in 1828, referring to Howe’s activities, “At this time in the history of the world, it was almost impossible to be an editor without being a politician also.”

And how the members of the press gallery could play politics. Thomas White Jr., called “the Father of the Gallery” by the Canadian Illustrated News in 1875, bought the Hamilton Spectator and the Gazette in Montreal before getting elected and becoming Macdonald’s influential minister of the interior. Henri Bourassa left Laurier’s Cabinet and founded Le Devoir in Montreal, later turning over direction of the paper to a gallery veteran, Georges Pelletier. In the 1900s, two English giants of journalism — friendly with the party in power — graduated from the press gallery to become editors of powerful newspapers: John Willison of the Globe in Toronto and John Dafoe of the Free Press in Winnipeg. In almost a direct line, Dafoe’s figurative descendants over the decades continued the close association and influence with Liberal governments, including Grant Dexter of the Winnipeg Free Press, Bruce Hutchison of the Vancouver Sun, and Blair Fraser of Maclean’s. For the Conservatives, there was the irrepressible Grattan O’Leary, who rose from poverty in the Gasp. to the editorship of the Ottawa Journal and was a confidant of three Tory leaders. In an era when there was no Twitter, Snapchat, or email, these men wrote diaries and exchanged letters with leaders and each other, providing a trove of archival material for historians about their thinking and their actions.

From all of that, we know that early press gallery members were a highly partisan lot. Indeed, the seating plan mirrored the one on the floor of the Commons below. London Free Press editor Arthur Ford, who covered his first Parliament in 1907 for the former Winnipeg Telegram, recalled in his memoir, As the World Wags On: “When I first went to the capital, the Liberals were in power and sat, of course, to the right of the Speaker. The representatives of the Liberal press sat in the press gallery also to the right.” When the Conservatives won the 1911 election, the Tory reporters swapped with the Liberals and moved over to the speaker’s right. So-called independent journalists were relegated to the cheap seats.

Until Laurier’s time, governments ladled out information — even including election calls — as patronage only to their friends in the gallery, the “ministerial press,” as they were known. Willison, who started in Ottawa in 1886 as a correspondent for the Liberal-leaning Globe, complained about his pro-Tory rivals having access to official documents before they were tabled in Parliament. “Their dispatches would be in the telegraph office before less favoured rivals could examine the reports,” he wrote in Reminiscences, Political, and Personal, his 1919 autobiography. “It was one way a grateful ministry paid newspapers for their support.”

Editorial Reviews

Power, Prime Ministers and the Press is a swift, well-written tour through the long and varied … history of the journalists covering federal politics in Canada.”

Quill & Quire

Robert Lewis has written a brilliant, irreplaceable book. His own experience as a parliamentary reporter over many years gives the account a distinct, personal feel, but it goes well beyond anecdotage to giving us a real history of the often tempestuous relationship between political leaders and the press galleries over the life of the country. Well written, funny, insightful, it takes us through personality clashes and technological change in a thoughtful way. It is a remarkable celebration of our country and the value of a free and outspoken press.

— Bob Rae, former premier of Ontario and leader of the federal Liberals

This is the riveting story of the men and women who wrote the first draft of Canada’s 150 year history. Bob Lewis tells it with a verve and obvious affection for a craft that has been his life’s work. He also introduces us to the old, pre-Confederation firebrand, William Lyon Mackenzie's warning that ‘(W)henever the press is not free, the people are poor, abject, degraded slaves ...’ and reminds us why this admonition is as relevant today as it was throughout the fascinating history he brings to life in these pages.

— Allan Gregg, pollster and political strategist

It has fallen, however, to Robert Lewis and his meticulously researched Power, Prime Ministers and the Press: The Battle for Truth on Parliament Hill to tie together the many disparate eras of the one-time boys club known as the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

Literary Review of Canada

The most important book of the year. Robert Lewis’s Power, Prime Ministers and the Press is essential reading for all who believe in a free press, democracy and the critical role of responsible journalism. It is both history lesson and civics lesson – as well as a magnificent portrayal of the National Press Gallery and the wonderful, often wacky, characters who have worked (and played) there from Confederation to tonight's news.

— Roy MacGregor, an award-winning journalist and author

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