COLONEL CLARK'S CHRONICLES: The Memories of a Canadian Politician, Journalist and Storyteller of the Early 20th Century

By Col. Hugh Clark and Daniel Crack

Colonel Hugh Clark was born on May 6th, 1867 on a farm on the Tenth Concession north of Kincardine, Ontario. He was a schoolteacher, a newspaperman, Lieutenant Colonel in the 32nd Bruce Regiment, and both a Provincial and Federal politician. He was still writing newspaper articles up until his death in 1959 and at that time was

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kinetics Design - kdbooks.ca
• Release date: Oct 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781988360133

Col. Hugh Clark

Mary Clark is Hugh Clark's granddaughter. She transcribed and edited Hugh Clark's notes to create this book. Bringing the book to life revived her memories of her grandfather, of the fun they had together, and of his character. She hopes that by reading this book, you too will gain an insight into that character.

Book preview

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TITLE PAGE

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COPYRIGHT

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Copyright © 2017 Mary Clark

ISBN 978-1-988360-12-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-988360-13-3 (ePUB)

Front cover photograph, Col. Hugh Clark circa 1934 — Clark family photo

Back cover and title page photograph, Hugh Clark — Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre: A2014.004, Hilda Downey fonds

Photograph of Mary Clark courtesy of Janet Jansson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in this regard and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Book design: Daniel Crack, Kinetics Design, kdbooks.ca, linkedin.com/in/kdbooks

DEDICATION

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This book is dedicated

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to the memory of

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Colonel Hugh Clark

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The Township of Kincardine

— Bruce County Supplement in Illustrated Atlas of the Dominion of Canada, Published by H. Belden & Co., Toronto, 1880.

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Kincardine Harbour, 1879

— The History of the County of Bruce 1906, Robertson, Norman, 1845-1936, Bruce County Historical Society, North York Public Library

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOREWORD

— By The Rt. Hon. Joe Clark

BACKGROUND

INTRODUCTION

— By Colonel Hugh Clark

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Chapter 1 THE NEWSPAPER BUSINESS

Chapter 2 GETTING INTO POLITICS

Chapter 3 THE LEGISLATURE

Chapter 4 SOME FEDERAL ELECTIONS

Chapter 5 ON THE FEDERAL FIELD

Chapter 6 ARTHUR MEIGHEN

Chapter 7 SIR SAM HUGHES

Chapter 8 HON. W. J. HANNA

Chapter 9 MISCELLANY

Chapter 10 THE HUMOURS OF PROHIBITION

Chapter 11 A TRIP ABROAD

Chapter 12 MY TENT ON THE TENTH

Chapter 13 ON THE OLD CAMPGROUND

Chapter 14 BRUCE COUNTY CHARACTERS

Chapter 15 SOME LATER ENTRIES

Chapter 16 HUGH CLARK ˙

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Iwould like to thank the following people for their support:

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• Rt. Hon. Joe Clark for writing the foreword and for providing historical background information

• Daniel Crack for design, assistance with photographs, and for simplifying so many aspects of the process!

• Margaret McNiven for finding Col. Clark’s writings and for editing and support

• Heather Webber for editing and advice on marketing and direction

• Gord McFaull for editing, providing historical background and clarification, and for support and direction

• Florence St. Jean for proofreading and encouragement

• Diana Thomson for support and encouragement

• Jennifer Shelley and Janet Jansson for photographs

• Debbie Bianco for her ideas and assistance.

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MARY CLARK

2017

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FOREWORD

OUR Sense of our past is often triggered by dates and events – a birth, a death, a first encounter with a person or a way of thinking which changed our own life. But those are static markers. What’s more elusive, and more valuable, is to glimpse ‘what things were like’ – the character or texture of times beyond our direct experience. That’s where ‘stories’ matter – whether they are history or fiction or both.

The author of this volume, Colonel Hugh Clark, was, among other qualities, a natural storyteller, who lived with eyes wide-open and with an abiding sense of humour, a century and more ago.

He was born in 1867, the year of Confederation, and lived 92 active and stimulating years, including as a teacher, an elected Member of both the Ontario and Canadian Parliaments, and a lifetime as an editor and commentator.

He owned The Kincardine Review in Bruce County, Ontario, was editor of The Ottawa Citizen for a period in the late 1800s, and wrote a weekly column ‘Pertinent Topics – Discussed by H.C.’ which appeared in several publications, and enlivened my own family’s Alberta weekly newspaper The High River Times for decades, not missing a deadline until the week he died.

Beyond being active in the issues of his time, he was also an observer – often an amused and trenchant observer – fascinated by the personalities and events he experienced and helped shape.

He was what was then called a ‘paragrapher’ – and according to both Saturday Night and The Globe and Mail – one of the best paragraphers on the continent. He wrote short sharp observations of a world he viewed through the twinkle in his eye. Late in his long life, he brought that talent to this manuscript.

Fortunately, Colonel Hugh was also the grandfather of Mary Clark, who edited and published this volume, and Margaret McNiven, who discovered the manuscript from which it is drawn.

He was my own grandfather’s elder brother, and, by one of the coincidences of a still-small country, he was also, in 1916, the Member of Parliament appointed by Prime Minister Robert Borden as Canada’s first parliamentary undersecretary to the Department of External Affairs where, some seventy years later, I was privileged to serve as Foreign Minister.

We’re proud to claim him, but this is more than a family book.

The world was local then, but not small. Colonel Hugh was rooted deeply in his own community of Kincardine, Bruce County, and that county helped populate the prairies. In the Clark case, three brothers were drawn west – a farmer, an editor, a storekeeper. And when Mayme, my Michigan grandmother who had been proposed to on the shores of Lake Huron, began to feel a little cut off in her new married home on the edge of the prairie, she inveigled two of her single sisters to come West, and they stayed and married and their friends and families grew, forming links across the continent. The Canadian story.

Apart from his tangible accomplishments and perceptive insights, Hugh Clark seems to have been a wonderful companion, with a gift for friendship, and a sharp ear for both the humorous and the salient. He lived, worked and wrote in days when one’s circles of friends might have been smaller, but the connections were more durable and some of the conversations deeper. It was an age of trains not planes and many of the stories in this volume were inspired by strangers Hugh Clark met clicking along the lonely rails from Ottawa to Toronto to Kincardine, but also across the stretching prairie and through Atlantic Canada. Travellers had time to talk and, in Colonel Hugh’s case, to listen, and then gently recast what he heard into small portraits of his time.

Some examples from the text:

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The U.S.A.

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In October 1916, Sir Cecil Spring Rice, the British Ambassador to the United States, was in Ottawa. … I was then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for External Affairs with an office adjoining that of the Prime Minister in the East Block…. Six months later the United States was at war against Germany, yet in October, Sir Cecil told me that if (the USA) came into the war at all it would be on the side of the central powers. I told him I did not believe that possible…. The Ambassador said Don’t overlook this, Colonel. The United States is an alien country speaking English.

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As a Member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament

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There was a fierce struggle over a private bill to make J. G. (Certiorari) McKenzie, a lawyer. The benchers opposed it. In committee, I moved … an amendment to make him a veterinary surgeon instead. The chairman, Hon. W. J. Hanna, read it and laughed, but did not submit it. He told me afterwards he was afraid it would carry.

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When fire destroyed the House of Commons

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A member from New Brunswick was speaking on the lobster industry and had just said Heat is death to frozen fish when the cry of Fire arose and the few members present rushed out through the suffocating smoke … We watched the fire from the Rideau Club immediately opposite. … (One) MP … had studied the Parliamentary Guide and knew the ages of the Ontario senators and was quite frank in expressing his opinion that when so-and-so died, he should get that seat. That night, … he came up to me with tears streaming down his cheeks and said that it was pitiful to see the Senate chamber going up in flames and that the tragedy of it all was there wasn’t a damned Senator in it at the time.

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On the vagaries of elections

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In the federal campaign of 1908, I accompanied Mr. R. L. Borden in his speaking tour through Ontario, Québec and the Maritime Provinces. … When we completed our tour eastward, I was sure the Conservative party would win. On the return tour, I was sure it wouldn’t. I wrote Mrs. Borden a letter she would get the morning of the election, telling her that her husband would be elected in Halifax, but defeated in the country. An article headed the Duty of the Hour had appeared in the Orange Sentinel, urging Protestants to vote for Borden. The Liberals had reprinted it in pamphlet form and had mailed it to Roman Catholics. … that article and … anti-French articles appearing in the Toronto Telegram from time to time … were all preserved until election time, when they were printed in French and distributed.

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On the Union Government in the First World War

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(Borden) used every effort possible to induce Sir Wilfrid Laurier to join the Union Government, even agreeing to accept a subordinate position himself in that government. For Sir Wilfrid he had great respect and admiration and I am sure it was reciprocated, but the Liberal chieftain was afraid that if he joined, Henri Bourassa would supersede him as … leader of his compatriots.

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On Arthur Meighen, the friend Colonel Hugh most admired:

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Red Michael Clark, the Liberal, then Progressive MP for Red Deer, himself a debater of impressive force, told me once that the most delicate piece of mechanism he had ever encountered was Arthur Meighen’s intellect, and he had met Gladstone and Bright, as well as all the leading Canadian statesmen.

Many of Colonel Hugh’s writings were lost in a long-ago fire; I’ve found some others in the National Archives files of Arthur Meighen, Eugene Forsey and other admirers, and more may come to light.

I regret never having met him personally. Some of my own dad’s favorite memories were of times when, as a young man himself, he had been conscripted to drive his father and Colonel Hugh on excursions around Alberta. Dad drove, with the brothers in the back seat, and they all sang most of the way, including ditties that would now not pass muster in my feminist family. Colonel Hugh would regularly ask that they stop the car, when a person or a landmark caught his interest, and they’d all get out to learn something new.

This small volume helps us learn something old, and make history human.

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THE RT. HON. JOE CLARK

2017

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Hugh Clark’s notes and scribbles.

— Clark family photo

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BACKGROUND

Colonel Hugh Clark was born on May 6th, 1867 on a farm on the Tenth Concession north of Kincardine, Ontario.