Word: pearson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...year after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the Suez crisis, Pearson abandoned his brilliant diplomatic career to assume the leadership of the recently defeated Liberal Party. Within two months he had led his party into unprecedented political catastrophe. The Conservatives under John Diefenbaker achieved the most one-sided election victory in Canadian history, and Pearson became the leader of a tiny Opposition...
Diefenbaker gradually squandered his spectacular mandate, and in April, 1963, Pearson squeezed into power with a near-majority in the House of Commons. But to say that Pearson had won would be an exaggeration. His campaign, fought mainly on the issue of U.S. nuclear arms for Canadian bases (Pearson was for them), proceeded from inanity to embarrassment in a bizarre adaption of American public relations techniques...
...Pearson's Liberals tried in the 1963 campaign to present the voters a Kennedy image of vigor and purposefulness. Lacking the youthfulness of the Kennedy appeal (Pearson was nearly 65), they relied heavily on ridicule and a self-conscious sense of mission. Among Pearson's campaign gambits was the "Sixty Days of Decision," a promise that a Liberal victory would precipitate two-months of resolute, clear-headed and exciting government to set things right after six years of Conservative misrule...
...separatist bombings in a wealthy English-speaking district of Montreal, and in an atmosphere of crisis, the new Prime Minister announced the formation of a Royal Commission to investigate French-English relations in Canada. The Commission presented its recommendations a month ago, after more than four years of study. (Pearson's successor will decide on their implementation..) The climax of the Sixty Days came when Pearson's Finance Minister, Walter Gordon, presented a budget so unworkable and confused that its main features were eventually withdrawn altogether...
Gordon was to provide more problems for Pearson in the next few years, as he became the spokesman for Canadian economic nationalism. Gordon declared that increasing American investment was reducing Canada to colonial status, and he campaigned noisily within the Pearson government for sharp curbs on American ownership. Pearson tried, mainly by doing nothing, to find a middle course between the nationalists and the internationalists. Meanwhile his Cabinet began to polarize over the issue. Gordon, apparently defeated, resigned in November, 1965, but returned to the Cabinet a year later in a new post, and quickly embarrassed his P.M. again with...