Mr. Speaker, I rise to join with other members in paying tribute today to the memory of John Diefenbaker on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
John Diefenbaker has been described today by the Prime Minister and others as a prairie populist, as a man with his roots in the common people who sought to give expression to their hopes, fears and dreams through the medium of politics and public policy.
As a student I once attended a huge rally which he addressed in Edmonton's Jubilee Auditorium. The place was packed and there was no place left to sit except at the press tables on the platform behind where he was speaking. I took out a notebook and disguised myself as a scribe and ended up sitting about 20 feet behind him while he addressed about 5,000 people packed into a building that would hold about 3,500.
As was his custom he had a large sheaf of papers on the podium. For the first 10 minutes he simply flipped through the pages touching lightly on a subject, assessing the feedback from the audience, moving lightly to another subject, touching lightly on it and assessing the feedback from it and so forth, until he had a fix on the concerns and the hopes of that audience.
These he returned to with a vengeance, speaking directly to their concerns and hopes with an accuracy and a vigour that defied imagination. He had a peculiar ability to read an audience very quickly and to relate quickly and forcibly to the hopes and fears of his fellow Canadians.
As a prairie populist John Diefenbaker was one of a select list of characters that cuts across party lines, including F. W. G. Haultain, the last great premier of the Northwest Territories; John Bracken and Henry Wisewood of the Progressives; William Aberhart, J. S. Woodsworth and Tommy Douglas. What set John Diefenbaker apart was that he was the only prairie populist in this century to become the Prime Minister of Canada.
Like all of us he had weaknesses as well as strengths. He had detractors as well as admirers and supporters. However there was one point on which he could not be faulted and that was on his love and commitment to Canada, "one Canada" to use his favourite phrase.
On behalf of my Reform colleagues, the people of Saskatchewan and the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who either loved him or hated him but were never indifferent to him, I pay tribute to John Diefenbaker and his commitment to one Canada, on the 100th anniversary of his birth.