Times of Transformation

Barbara J. Messamore’s fascinating overview of the 1921 federal election arrived in bookstores just ahead of this past spring’s tariffcrazed “axe-the-tax” federal showdown. The book opens with a long list of factors that complicated the similarly tariff-influenced showdown between Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Conservatives’ Arthur Meighen — not least of which was the appearance of the new National Progressive Party led by Thomas Alexander Crerar, who was a fed-up grain farmer. Not only had Crerar been one of Meighen’s Conservative cabinet colleagues in 1919 but he also later served as a Liberal cabinet minister for King. 

Voters — weary and wary after the First World War and the recent influenza pandemic — included newly enfranchised women, angry farmers, Winnipeg General Strikers, political reformers and influential business leaders (who loved or hated tariffs). Messamore gives each element careful consideration before delving into the result, which was revealed slowly by telegraph and news headlines, long before Canada had built its national radio network.