Read Online The Promised Land: Settling the West 1896-1914 by Pierre Berton - Free Book Online
Authors: Pierre Berton
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he managed to bring its editor at least part way into the Liberal camp and “to say a good word for the Liberal government in its record of settling the west.” To sweeten the deal, Dafoe urged Sifton to throw the paper some government business.
On another occasion, he prepared a blatantly pro-Liberal pamphlet to be distributed among Galician settlers containing photographs of all the Liberal candidates who had Galicians in their constituencies. “Under every cut,” he told Sifton, proudly, “we will put the name and then some legend as this –‘This is the Government Candidate for such and such a constituency, all Galetians [sic] should vote for him.’ We are also arranging to include a small map of western Canada showing the projected G.T.P. [Grand Trunk Pacific] line and branches in bold relief. Under it we will put some such words as these,–‘This is a railway the Liberal government intends to build. If you want this railway vote for the Liberal Candidates.’”
It is true that Sifton – after considerable argument (the two men wrangled for a week) – allowed Dafoe to go his own way during the 1911 election campaign. It was an odd reversal of roles. Sifton, the leading Westerner, was now an Eastern capitalist. Dafoe, whose family roots in Ontario went back for several generations, had become a fervent Westerner. Sifton moved in the same social and financial circles as the industrial power brokers of Ontario and Quebec who wanted to maintain the protective tariff on Eastern manufactured goods. Dafoe saw himself as the spokesman for the Western farmer,who was tired of paying a premium on agricultural implements and other goods, which would be cheaper if the tariff were reduced or dropped.
But Sifton was ever the businessman. For his newspaper suddenly to change its advocacy of reciprocity would be embarrassing and damaging; the Free Press would lose not only its hard-won prestige in the West but also circulation. So Dafoe was allowed to continue his support of the official Liberal platform. As a result, the paper gained credibility among the Western farmers, Dafoe went down in history as a fighting editor who was no man’s servant, and Sifton’s own image was immeasurably polished as a man of principle, broadminded enough to give a great journalist his head.
The fact that one editor had actually been permitted to take a different line from his political master was so startling in those days that it became a cause célèbre . Nothing like it had ever happened before, certainly in Western Canada. And, in Dafoe’s case, nothing like it happened again. A year after this indulgence Sifton was again giving orders to Dafoe, and Dafoe was following them. Here is Sifton, gently rapping his editor’s knuckles on the matter of the Grand Trunk Pacific, at that time the Liberal party’s pet railway but certainly not Sifton’s: “Now I want to be perfectly plain with you. So far as I can remember you have sheared off of making any attacks on or serious criticism of the Grand Trunk Pacific. You have always been ready enough to strike the CPR or the CNR [Canadian Northern Railway] but apparently for political reasons you are very loathe to say anything about the GTP . That policy will have to be dropped.” And Dafoe dropped it.
None of this is in the least surprising. Editors were hired because their publishers knew in advance what political opinions they held. Dafoe’s views rarely differed from those of Sifton. Some journalists who professed to know said that Dafoe did not care for his employer, but there is no documentary evidence of that. His biography of Sifton, in fact, borders on the sycophantic; in it Dafoe was not above glossing over certain disagreeable facts and inflating favourable ones to put his publisher in the best possible light. But that, too, was the way of politics and journalism in the early years of the century.
Dafoe was not the first editor, nor the last, to jump with both feet into party
On another occasion, he prepared a blatantly pro-Liberal pamphlet to be distributed among Galician settlers containing photographs of all the Liberal candidates who had Galicians in their constituencies. “Under every cut,” he told Sifton, proudly, “we will put the name and then some legend as this –‘This is the Government Candidate for such and such a constituency, all Galetians [sic] should vote for him.’ We are also arranging to include a small map of western Canada showing the projected G.T.P. [Grand Trunk Pacific] line and branches in bold relief. Under it we will put some such words as these,–‘This is a railway the Liberal government intends to build. If you want this railway vote for the Liberal Candidates.’”
It is true that Sifton – after considerable argument (the two men wrangled for a week) – allowed Dafoe to go his own way during the 1911 election campaign. It was an odd reversal of roles. Sifton, the leading Westerner, was now an Eastern capitalist. Dafoe, whose family roots in Ontario went back for several generations, had become a fervent Westerner. Sifton moved in the same social and financial circles as the industrial power brokers of Ontario and Quebec who wanted to maintain the protective tariff on Eastern manufactured goods. Dafoe saw himself as the spokesman for the Western farmer,who was tired of paying a premium on agricultural implements and other goods, which would be cheaper if the tariff were reduced or dropped.
But Sifton was ever the businessman. For his newspaper suddenly to change its advocacy of reciprocity would be embarrassing and damaging; the Free Press would lose not only its hard-won prestige in the West but also circulation. So Dafoe was allowed to continue his support of the official Liberal platform. As a result, the paper gained credibility among the Western farmers, Dafoe went down in history as a fighting editor who was no man’s servant, and Sifton’s own image was immeasurably polished as a man of principle, broadminded enough to give a great journalist his head.
The fact that one editor had actually been permitted to take a different line from his political master was so startling in those days that it became a cause célèbre . Nothing like it had ever happened before, certainly in Western Canada. And, in Dafoe’s case, nothing like it happened again. A year after this indulgence Sifton was again giving orders to Dafoe, and Dafoe was following them. Here is Sifton, gently rapping his editor’s knuckles on the matter of the Grand Trunk Pacific, at that time the Liberal party’s pet railway but certainly not Sifton’s: “Now I want to be perfectly plain with you. So far as I can remember you have sheared off of making any attacks on or serious criticism of the Grand Trunk Pacific. You have always been ready enough to strike the CPR or the CNR [Canadian Northern Railway] but apparently for political reasons you are very loathe to say anything about the GTP . That policy will have to be dropped.” And Dafoe dropped it.
None of this is in the least surprising. Editors were hired because their publishers knew in advance what political opinions they held. Dafoe’s views rarely differed from those of Sifton. Some journalists who professed to know said that Dafoe did not care for his employer, but there is no documentary evidence of that. His biography of Sifton, in fact, borders on the sycophantic; in it Dafoe was not above glossing over certain disagreeable facts and inflating favourable ones to put his publisher in the best possible light. But that, too, was the way of politics and journalism in the early years of the century.
Dafoe was not the first editor, nor the last, to jump with both feet into party
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