Unbuttoned

Unbuttoned PDF Author: Christopher Dummitt
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773549390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King's death, the public was bombarded with stories about "Weird Willie," the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King's character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives. Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King's diary and details the specific decisions of King's literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King's diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King's diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation. Presenting extensive archival research in a captivating narrative, Unbuttoned traces the rise of a political culture that privileged the individual as the ultimate source of truth, and made Canadians rethink what they wanted to know about politicians.

Unbuttoned

Unbuttoned PDF Author: Christopher Dummitt
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773549390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
When Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King died in 1950, the public knew little about his eccentric private life. In his final will King ordered the destruction of his private diaries, seemingly securing his privacy for good. Yet twenty-five years after King's death, the public was bombarded with stories about "Weird Willie," the prime minister who communed with ghosts and cavorted with prostitutes. Unbuttoned traces the transformation of the public’s knowledge and opinion of King's character, offering a compelling look at the changing way Canadians saw themselves and measured the importance of their leaders’ personal lives. Christopher Dummitt relates the strange posthumous tale of King's diary and details the specific decisions of King's literary executors. Along the way we learn about a thief in the public archives, stolen copies of King's diaries being sold on the black market, and an RCMP hunt for a missing diary linked to the search for Russian spies at the highest levels of the Canadian government. Analyzing writing and reporting about King, Dummitt concludes that the increasingly irreverent views of King can be explained by a fundamental historical transformation that occurred in the era in which King's diaries were released, when the rights revolution, Freud, 1960s activism, and investigative journalism were making self-revelation a cultural preoccupation. Presenting extensive archival research in a captivating narrative, Unbuttoned traces the rise of a political culture that privileged the individual as the ultimate source of truth, and made Canadians rethink what they wanted to know about politicians.

King

King PDF Author: Allan Levine
Publisher: D & M Publishers
ISBN: 1553659082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1

Get Book Here

Book Description
William Lyon Mackenzie King, twice former Prime Minister of Canada, was a brilliant tactician, was passionately committed to Canadian unity, and was a protector of the underdog, introducing such cornerstones of Canada’s social safety net as unemployment insurance, family allowances and old-age pensions. At the same time, he was insecure, craved flattery, became upset at minor criticism, and was prone to fantasy—especially about the Tory conspiracy against him. King loosened the Imperial connection with Britain and was wary of American military and economic power. Yet he loved all things British and acted like a praised schoolboy when British Prime Minister Winston Churchill or U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt treated him as an equal. This first major biography of Mackenzie King in 30 years mines the pages of his remarkable diary, at 30,000 pages one of the most significant and revealing political documents in Canada’s history and a guide to the deep and often moving inner conflicts that haunted Mackenzie King. With animated prose and a subtle wit, Allan Levine draws a multidimensional portrait of this most compelling of politicians.

William Lyon Mackenzie King

William Lyon Mackenzie King PDF Author: lian goodall
Publisher: Dundurn
ISBN: 1770706860
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mackenzie King (1874-1950) was Canadas tenth and longest serving prime minister and an important figure on the international scene, especially during the Second World War. This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the world of Mackenzie King.

The Mackenzie King Record

The Mackenzie King Record PDF Author: J. W. Pickersgill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Canada
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Mackenzie King Record

The Mackenzie King Record PDF Author: J. W. Pickersgill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Canada
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Get Book Here

Book Description


History's People

History's People PDF Author: Margaret MacMillan
Publisher: House of Anansi
ISBN: 1487000073
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Part of the CBC Massey Lectures Series In History’s People internationally acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan gives her own personal selection of figures of the past, women and men, some famous and some little-known, who stand out for her. Some have changed the course of history and even directed the currents of their times. Others are memorable for being risk-takers, adventurers, or observers. She looks at the concept of leadership through Bismarck and the unification of Germany; William Lyon MacKenzie King and the preservation of the Canadian Federation; Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the bringing of a unified United States into the Second World War. She also notes how leaders can make huge and often destructive mistakes, as in the cases of Hitler, Stalin, and Thatcher. Richard Nixon and Samuel de Champlain are examples of daring risk-takers who stubbornly went their own ways, often in defiance of their own societies. Then there are the dreamers, explorers, and adventurers, individuals like Fanny Parkes and Elizabeth Simcoe who manage to defy or ignore the constraints of their own societies. Finally, there are the observers, such as Babur, the first Mughal emperor of India, and Victor Klemperer, a Holocaust survivor, who kept the notes and diaries that bring the past to life. History’s People is about the important and complex relationship between biography and history, individuals and their times.

What is this Spiritualism?

What is this Spiritualism? PDF Author: Horace Leaf
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Spiritualism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

Get Book Here

Book Description


A Very Double Life

A Very Double Life PDF Author: C. P. Stacey
Publisher: Formac Publishing Company
ISBN: 0887801366
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book Here

Book Description
A shrewd politician whose private life was one of bizzare and obsessive drives, sex life, love affairs, seances.

J.L. Ilsley: A Political Biography

J.L. Ilsley: A Political Biography PDF Author: Barry Cahill
Publisher: Formac
ISBN: 9781459506862
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book Here

Book Description
A farmer’s son from rural Nova Scotia, J. L. Ilsley (1894–1967) is an almost forgotten figure who played a key role in government during the Second World War, even though he was despised by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. Ilsley was spectacularly successful in cajoling and compelling Canadians to pay for the war. He became a highly regarded national figure. He gradually established his claim to succeed William Lyon Mackenzie King as Prime Minister when the time came. Ultimately, in his devious way, King thwarted Ilsley’s ambition. Ilsley abandoned politics to take up the post of chief justice in Nova Scotia for 17 years. His place in Canadian political history has been undermined by family members who destroyed his personal papers. Historian and biographer Barry Cahill has pieced together the story of Ilsley’s career for the first time. He used the personal papers of other Ottawa figures of the times, previously secret cabinet records, and glimpses of the man as seen by others in his circle – including, of course, Mackenzie King in his voluminous diaries.

Anatomy of a Seance

Anatomy of a Seance PDF Author: Stan McMullin
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773571973
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
MacKenzie King did it, so did Susanna Moody. In fact, many Canadians consulted the spirits as part of a religious experience, to seek guidance for themselves and others, and to attempt to learn what lies beyond the grave. Some came to the seance room to hear ancient wisdom while others came to understand the nature of psychic phenomena. Like the mechanisms that produced the flashing lights, cool breezes, and whirling trumpets that materialized in the presence of the medium, their beliefs and experiences have been mostly hidden, until now. In this first full-length study of Canadian spirit communication, Stan McMullin has drawn upon seance notes, letters, diaries, and special collections to create a fascinating picture of how educated people were drawn to spiritualism and psychic research. Anatomy of a Seance shows that for many Canadians attempting to sort out their religious beliefs and find an acceptable marriage between religion and science the seance room provided an alternative to formal religious dogma. Despite the opposition of mainline churches, spiritualism offered the possibility of a "scientific" religion that could prove the existence of heaven.