Sir John A. Macdonald

Well its official, King Ralph has officially ended his reign. No matter your opinion of him, he was defiantly a memorable Premier. His departure has gotten me curious about some of Canada other leaders and their eccentrics. I was quite surprised on how many wacky leaders we’ve had and the fact they’re often considered to be our best. The one that really grabbed my attention was Sir John A. Macdonald.

The Man himself

If you remember your high school history, you’ll know that Sir Macdonald was our first Prime Minister and largely responsible for the creation of Canada as a nation. But more likely you’re more familiar with him as the dude on our $10 bill. The more I read about him the more interested I got. His story paints the picture of an extremely intelligent and charismatic man whose life was beset by enough personally tragedy to make the OC seem like legitimate TV.

This is how we're most familar with Sir Macdonald
(I got this image from this site. It's got lots of various money, definitely worth checking out)

I’m not going to give a detailed biography of his life; you can find that in a million places. Here’s just a quick rundown of some of the things that leap out at me as being interesting.

He was one damn good politician. Born 1815, died in 1891. In that time he managed to be the Prime Minster of Canada for 19 year. Of course one must also consider that he was instrumental in the creation of Canada. He was able to form an alliance with his greatest political opponent (George Brown) in order to convince the British to allow Canada to become its own country. Sir Macdonald was also key in convincing Manitoba and British Columbia into confederation.

To give you an idea of how effective Sir Macdonald was, in 1873 he was caught in a scandal. He appointed a man (Sir Hugh Allan) to expand the railroad, a man who had promised Macdonald’s party a large amount of election funding. When this all came to light Macdonald and his conservative government was forced to resign. He was eventually voted out as the leader of his party. However, it wasn’t long until he was reelected both the leader of the Conservatives again, but the Prime Minster in 1878. A role he would play till his death in 1891.

Older Sir John A. Macdonald

But he was definitely a man who had some personal demons. When he was only 7 years old, Macdonald watched his brother get beaten to death by his caregiver. He would have two wives. The first one (Isabelle Clark) got sick soon after their marriage and would slowly die in just 14 years. Of his 3 children, 1 died young and another was mentally handicapped.

So basically it’s no surprised that Macdonald was a huge alcoholic. He was known to sit in his bed for days drowning bottle of port one after another. In one drunken incident he disappeared in Quebec for 2 days and was rumored to have attempted suicide in the St. Lawrence.

He was also known to drink within the House of Commons. It became so common that When Macdonald was drunk while giving an assembly the newspapers would describe it as Macdonald having an “attack”.

In one example of Macdonalds hijinks he was debating and opponent during a campaign speech. While the opponent was speaking Mcdonald turned to the side and vomited. When the opponent asked “Is this Macdonald you want running your country? A drunk.” Macdonald responded, “I get sick ... not because of drink [but because] I am forced to listen to the ranting of my honorable opponent.” I read various wordings of that exchange but I think CBCs sounded the best.

Well theres some random facts about John A. Macdonald. He really struck me as an interesting person and I felt like writing a bit about him. If your curious we I got all this, I summarized mainly from the internet after I read an interesting Macleans article. All the stuff I got from Wikipedia I found somewhere more reliable.

References:
http://www.canadahistory.com/sections/politics/PRIMEMINISTERS/John_A_Macdonald.htm
http://www.cbc.ca/greatest/top_ten/nominee/macdonald-john.html
http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/history/article.jsp?content=20061023_135189_135189
http://www.wikipedia.org