Great Smackdowns in Canadian Political History
October 15th, 2007 by Jeremy Keehn in The Bironist
In anticipation of tomorrow night’s Throne Speech Throwdown, I bring you this, from the days when civil discourse wasn’t always so civil:
“You damned pup! I’ll slap your chops!”
–John A. Macdonald, to his former Kingston legal pupil, Oliver Mowat, on the floor of parliament in May 1861. Mowat had just suggested that Macdonald was exaggerating Mowat’s views on representation by population.
Donald Creighton’s John A. Macdonald: The Young Politician, sets the scene beautifully:
There must have been some provocation in [Mowat's] remarks—some charge that Macdonald had wilfully falsified his views. Macdonald gasped. These impertinences were actually coming from the fat boy who had been his inky junior at school and his respectful apprentice at law! Suddenly, as the plump, bespectacled, rather self-important little man finished his statement, Macdonald’s brittle temper was shattered into splinters as at a blow. In a minute—as soon as the Speaker had left the chair—he walked quickly across the gangway. Blind rage in his heart, he confronted Mowat.
“You damned pup,” he roared. “I’ll slap your chops!”
John Sandfield Macdonald quickly stepped between the antagonists. Others helped to pull them apart.”
If you’re like me, you’re now thinking it’s high time CBC aired a program called The Toughest Canadian, in which celebrities grease up and enter the squared circle on behalf of their picks. Tell me you wouldn’t tune in to see Mary Walsh, representing Marie-Madelaine Jarret de Verchères,1 give Ben Mulroney, representing Louis Cyr,2 his comeuppance.
Today’s token blogger self-love: I grow enviably lush mutton chops. Sir John A. would have used them like handlebars to steer my head straight through the Speaker’s chair.
Next, on the Bironist: bidding starts on the naming rights for my comedic sidekick.
Footnotes
1At fourteen, Verchères (1678–1747) commanded the defence of her family’s fort against a band of Iroquois for a week. She apparently also became extremely litigious in her later years. The two must be connected, but I’m not sure how.
2Legendary strongman and mama’s boy (1863-1912).
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Posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:25 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.
October 16th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Sort of a Profiles in Courage for the surly set.
October 26th, 2007 at 9:37 am
I’d pay a lot of money to see Sir John A vs. Jean Chretien in a time-machine cage match. Couldn’t they digitally re-create that somehow? Or make it a video game, ala Rocky 6.
January 17th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
[...] highlighted Sir John A. Macdonald’s set-to with Oliver Mowat, as described by Creighton, in an earlier post. Gwyn, in his recently released Macdonald bio, at one point offers a list of epithets commonly [...]