While he is today considered one of Canada’s greatest Prime Ministers, many of the immediate reactions to Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s resignation announcement in late 1967 were not so kind. South of the border, the Harvard Crimson published an opinion column on this date in 1968 that was, in part, critical of Pearson’s premiership.
“Canada's Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson… will be remembered as a great diplomat who shouldn't have gone into politics,” Harvard student David Bruck, a transplanted Canadian born in Montreal, wrote, adding that the retiring PM’s government was best described as one of “drab confusion and… quiet disasters.”
Despite this critique, Bruck concluded that Pearson was leaving the political stage with accomplishments of which the 14th PM could be very proud.
“Despite its tendency toward political misadventure, the Pearson government has compiled a surprisingly solid legislative record,” Bruck continued. “It has built up a progressive social security system, and has begun to introduce the principle of the guaranteed annual income. It successfully managed the difficult task of unifying Canada's Army, Navy and Air Force into a single force designed largely for United Nations peace-keeping missions.”
It is interesting to note that Bruck went on to enjoy a successful legal and academic career. Today he is considered one of America’s most important opponents of the death penalty.
You can read Bruck’s essay about Prime Minister Pearson in full at this link.
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.