[.ca] William Lyon Mackenzie King: Dreams and Shadows (ISBN 1894852028)

How extraordinary!:
This short book could never have been written before the publication of William Lyon Mackenzie King's diaries. Given the centrality to the book of King's interest in spiritism, revealed by the diaries, the picture of King which is obtained could never have been presented to the Canadian electorate in the course of King's acclaimed election victories which made him the Commonwealth's longest-serving Prime Minister. This is a simply written introduction to King, the man. The "serious" history books give prominence to the so-called "King-Byng Thing", namely, the controvery between Governor-General Byng and WLMK over the refused dissolution of Parliament in 1926. But given the centrality of King's interest in attempting to communicate with the dead, the rôle of Lady Byng in encouraging King's spiritist interests should be given more prominence than it is, and Lian Goodall makes a point of including this aspect in her short book. Does this short work in fact express more of King the man than do various more weighty tomes dedicated to his long career? I leave the question open. It would be trite just to say that this is an odd book, but William Lyon MacKenzie King was an extraordinarily odd person, so all must be forgiven. Museum interpreters are meant to be enthusiastic about the subject of their commemoration and Lian Goodall, formerly of Parks Canada's Woodside National Historic Site, King's boyhood home, certainly communicates enthusiasm for this historical figure who, in his lifetime, exuded anything but enthusiasm at a personal level. Only after reading Lian Goodall's book is one is struck by the similarity between King and his contemporary W B Yeats, himself no stranger to the crystal ball: King, as depicted in this book, and the Nobel prize-winning poet and Irish Free State Senator shared an elemental quest for linguistic obscurity and a rage against clarity. But, then, forging unities out of antitheses was all part of the historic MacDonald-Cartier scheme, ably continued by King's mentor Sir Wilfred Laurier. If the author is right in claiming that dreams and shadows capture the essence of the man, then one is embarking on the somewhat esoteric question of the nature of reality, which, otherwise stated, can only mean that a democratic leader such as King "successfully" manipulated reality to an extraordinary degree.