Word: cardinal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Both Liberals and Tories were relieved. The Munsinger case had simply become too hot to handle. The Tories' fire-breathing chieftain John Diefenbaker sounded strangely subdued in Parliament when he damned Liberal Justice Minister Lucien Cardin, who started the fuss in the first place, for "smear, scuttlebutt, slander and smut." Diefenbaker did not even try for a vote of confidence. His style was undoubtedly cramped by the fact that his former Transport Minister, George Hees, a gregarious Torontonian who at first indignantly disclaimed any acquaintance with the blonde, now conceded that he might have lunched with her at Ottawa...
...second Diefenbaker minister to admit he knew Gerda. Though it looked as if the Liberals would nail her as a "security risk" for her various unsavory associations in the past, it seemed less and less likely that she would turn out to be any sort of Mata Hari, as Cardin had darkly suggested. The files of West German intelligence agencies turned up not the slightest shred of evidence that she had worked for the East. And in CBC radio and TV interviews, the heavily mascaraed East German refugee made it abundantly clear that there was no love lost between...
...Monseignor case? Rumors of something called a Munsinger case had been making the round of government cocktail parties for years, but no one had ever dared mention it in public before. Could this be what Cardin was referring to? Nonsense, said Diefenbaker, flying away for a fishing trip. But the Munsinger case it was, and last week it exploded through Canada with such fury that it threatened to topple Cardin and the whole Liberal government of Prime Minister Lester Pearson...
Echoes of Profumo. Central figure of the case, Cardin told a press conference, was an "East German" blonde who had lived in Canada from 1955 to 1961, then returned to Germany, where she had died. He gave her name as Olga Munsinger and said she had been a spy before moving to Canada. There, he asserted, she had become involved with some of Diefenbaker's "Ministers-plural," and when Dief had found out about the affairs he had done nothing to stop them. "This is worse than Profumo," Cardin charged...
...Since Cardin had named no Cabinet names, his accusations put all of Diefenbaker's former Ministers under suspicion of hanky-panky. After a tea party for parliamentary wives, former Tory Defense Minister Douglas Harkness stormed into the House to demand that Cardin prove his "statements, insinuations and allegations" or resign. "Let him go home to his wife and family and endure what we have to endure," chimed in another Tory, and only some fast political footwork headed off a no-confidence motion that might well have brought down Pearson's minority government on the spot...