More than half a century has passed since militant Quebec separatists captured and murdered a provincial cabinet minister. But that’s not all they had in mind. Governor General Roland Michener, symbol of the hated Crown, would also be kidnapped, and if Pierre Trudeau’s government did not meet their demands, there were discussions about executing him on live television.
For award-winning journalist John Fraser, the October Crisis of 1970 reminds us that, for all the ceremonial artifice surrounding the representative of the Crown in Canada, the real world can intrude. In the early pages of his new book, The Governors General, we read how a frequently misunderstood institution conducted itself at a moment of national peril.
A Piercing Gaze into Canada’s Vice-Regals
“These days when I sometimes hear about the ‘ridiculous amount of security a governor general is given, I try to remind critics of what it would have been like to live through such an ordeal — not just Michener but a whole country having to witness such barbarism,” Fraser writes. It’s one of this book’s many virtues that it uses these long-ago events to illuminate the vice-regal role in a moment of tension.
Awakened in the middle of the night, the governor general was confronted by Pierre Trudeau’s controversial decision to impose the War Measures Act. Mindful of his constitutional limitations, Michener “didn’t see how he could oppose his first minister’s request, given the gravity of the situation.” But he was no rubber stamp. He voiced concerns about the impact on individual rights. And he “demanded to be kept informed on a regular basis about what was happening to the arrested citizens until the situation could be regularized.”
The Right to Warn
Michener was exercising the classic right to “warn” — a right integral to a constitutional monarchy — and this is part of what Fraser’s book is about. Aware that many Canadians resent the role of the Crown, he personally sees it as a worthy and important institution inseparable from Canada’s constitutional reality — and he’s surprised and pleased by the attention his latest book is receiving.
“I think maybe we should thank Trump for this because so many Canadians are looking at their own institutions in the way they haven’t before,” he tells Postmedia.
An Intimate History
His book is subtitled “an intimate history of Canada’s highest office.” The word “intimate” is appropriate given Fraser’s good fortune in having known many of the people he writes about, even on occasion finding himself part of the story. It confines itself to the 13 Canadian governors general who have served their country since 1952 when Vincent Massey succeeded Britain’s Viscount Alexander. The resulting volume is elegantly written, frequently playful, and consistently engaging. It can also be both tough-minded and compassionate — especially in the case of Julie Payette’s disastrous tenure.
