R.B and Me: The campaign to keep Viscount Bennett's remains in England by Peter O'Malley More than 140 years after his birth, and 60-plus years after his death, R.B. Bennett entered my life. Back in 1998, I became aware of a quiet movement afoot among some politicians to remove the former PM's remains from England, and to ship them to the town of his birth in New Brunswick. The idea was to create a museum to Bennett, with the (questionable) tourist lure being that his actual remains, and the sarcophagus in which they rested, would be moved to the site of the new museum. I also learned that one of the backers of this scheme was none other than the Governor General of the day, himself a New Brunswicker. This didn't sit right with me. Why was Bennett buried in England? Was it his wish? If so, why was it right to overrule his wishes and move his remains to Canada? I did some research. I quickly discovered that Bennett's intentions were clear when he left Canada four years after his defeat as PM. By then, he really didn't like Canada, or the people in it who thought so little of him. I could even remember hearing my own grandfather, decades later, trash Bennett as Canada's worst PM ever, a veritable monster who had failed to stop the global depression at Canada's borders. (Sound familiar?) As it turned out, on the eve of his 1939 move to England, Bennett did an “exit interview” with the Toronto Star which made his intentions clear. The Star reporter records the following exchange:

(Your roots) go deep in this (North American) continent. Won't you, when you go to England, be going into exile?"

For a moment, his head bent in characteristic fashion, he (Bennett) looked sharply from beneath challenging brows. Then he said, gently: "No, my friend, certainly not to exile."

"Would you say going home?"

"Yes, it will be home. Call it what you like, but that's what England is to me. I've felt it always. I felt it the first time I went there, when I was a youth. England to me is home. The countryside is mine, the fields, the shrines, the cities." As I was then learning web programming, I decided to create a “campaign” website dedicated to keeping Bennett's remains in England. I titled it: “The Viscount Richard Bedford Bennett Anti-Disinterment Web Site” deliberately using his British title -- Viscount Bennett – after his appointment to the House of Lords in the war years. My campaign commenced. It received coverage in New Brunswick, and a short article appeared in Macleans Magazine. It was even selected as Yahoo Canada's Political Website of the Week! I was also making contact with heritage advocates in the town of Mickleham in Surrey, where Bennett's beautiful sarcophagus stood directly in front of the main door of the local church. The heritage folks were not pleased with the idea of moving his remains to Canada. Alas, the campaign screeched to an early end. Word came down that the Governor General had renounced his participation in the grave robbing scheme. It was over, and R.B could now rest in peace in England. I posted a commentary on the website which summarized my overall rationale for the campaign. I leave the reader with the conclusion I stated in that piece, which is sadly even more relevant today:

“When the loathing of elected politicians becomes an ingrained part of a political culture, as is certainly the case in Canada, then the results are not insignificant: citizens are properly denied the political leadership which they otherwise might legitimately claim; ultimately, their capacity to govern themselves well through responsible democratic institutions is, fairly and in proportion, diminished. Viscount R.B. Bennett's grave in England is, I believe, a beneficial and proper symbol of this serious, corrosive political psychosis -- the chronic and irrational distrust of, and lack of respect for, elected politicians -- which grips Canadians.

I say, leave (Bennett) be. He is not in exile. We are. And so we now remain. Peter O'Malley is a retired communications professional living in the glorious Ottawa Valley. His Bennett campaign web site (minus the photos) can still be viewed online here. [caption id="attachment_570939" align="aligncenter" width="440"] Toronto Star article about Peter O'Malley's website campaign[/caption] Birthday alert: Sending out birthday best wishes to MPs Adam Vaughan and Cathay Wagantall. [caption id="attachment_570938" align="aligncenter" width="323"] Official Portrait of Richard Bedford Bennett, House of Commons Collection.[/caption] Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist.  He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney's best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen's Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy.  A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.