Читать книгу John Diefenbaker - Arthur Slade - Страница 12

2

Lawyer for the Defence

“Do you realize that sixty-five per cent of you will be pushing up daisies within three months?”

Diefenbaker and his fellow officers were bunked down on a cold concrete floor at Napier Barracks in Shorncliffe, England. The officer who had just called out had already been wounded at the front and had recovered enough to be sent back again. He wanted to let the boys know exactly what they were in for. Artillery echoing across the Channel added doom to his words. The officer shouted his question every time the group tried to sleep.

It was a harsh welcome for Diefenbaker and a sign of what was to come for him and his friends. They continued training in England while they waited to be sent to the front. Diefenbaker worked hard at the physically exhausting labour of digging trenches – perhaps too hard – for within a month he reported spitting up blood and shortness of breath. He was diagnosed with “disordered action of the heart” and within a short time had been judged unable to serve. He returned to Canada. Like his father, John had a weak constitution, but he still wanted to do his part for “King and Country.” He tried to enroll in the Royal Flying Corps but was turned down. Sadly, several of his friends who travelled overseas never returned.

Young lawyer in Wakaw, September 1919. Diefenbaker would win his first trial and become one of Saskatchewan’s most prosperous lawyers.

His brief military career over, John could now pursue his goal of becoming a lawyer. The University of Saskatchewan, like other Canadian universities, gave credit for war service, so Diefenbaker was able to graduate. In the spring of 1919 he wrote and passed his finals and received his law degree.

“Gentlemen of the Jury, have you reached your verdict?” The Clerk of the Court asked.

“We have.”

“How say you? Is the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty.”

With those two words in the fall of 1919 the career of John Diefenbaker, lawyer for the defence, was launched. It was his first victory, and news that the boy with the piercing blue eyes was a dynamite lawyer spread like wildfire through Wakaw and the surrounding area.

Diefenbaker had defended John Chernyski, a farmer who had stepped out of his house at twilight, seen his dogs wrestling with what looked like a fox or a coyote and had let go with both barrels of his shotgun. The animal yelped and then called out, “help!”

The victim was actually a neighbor boy who’d been crossing the field on his bike. He was wounded. Chernyski scrambled to take the boy to hospital.

Chernyski ended up in court charged with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. His wife convinced Diefenbaker to defend Chernyski – for a fee of six hundred dollars. Diefenbaker argued that the farmer had made a simple mistake: he’d gone from a brightly lit home to twilight without waiting for his eyes to adjust before pulling the trigger. There was no intention to cause another human being harm. The jury convened and decided John’s argument had been compelling enough to render a verdict of “Not guilty.” In his memoirs, John wrote that the jury was being kind to him because it was his birthday. If that truly was what motivated their decision then it was perhaps the best birthday present Diefenbaker had in his lifetime.

The small town of Wakaw, Saskatchewan, where Diefenbaker’s law office was located, had a population of six hundred. John had chosen the town after examining court records that showed Wakaw was, in his words, “particularly litigious, in court at a moment’s notice.” What better place for a lawyer to be! It was also close to Saskatoon, which made visiting his parents easy. There was another lawyer in town, but winning the Chernyski case helped John gain a good reputation.

He had sixty-two trials in his first year of practice and won half of them. He would sometimes travel between villages on an old railway handcar, but by the summer of 1920 he paid off a few of his debts, moved into a larger office and bought a Maxwell touring car at a price of $1764.00.

“It was a thing of beauty,” John later said, “if not a joy forever.” Sadly, tires in those days were not all that dependable. “The only good thing about it was its name… I lost all count of the flat tires. But I loved to tour.” The boy who used to taunt the wealthy in their newfangled automobiles now had a car of his own.

It wasn’t all about money, touring around, and winning court cases, for John there was a real stake in defending the innocent and the downtrodden: “When I accepted a case where I thought someone’s rights were being violated, often the person couldn’t pay me, or did so only after many years. From the beginning of my practice, I never charged a Métis or an Indian who came to me for advice. I was distressed by their conditions, the unbelievable poverty and the injustice done them.”

He lived frugally and threw himself into his work, though he did take the time to drive to Vancouver in 1921 and Los Angeles in 1923, long trips over unpaved roads, and he also bought a summer cottage at Wakaw Lake, where he could fish and hunt.

Diefenbaker wasn’t as lucky in love as he was in court; he remained ill at ease with young women. He blamed this shyness on his childhood: “I am sorry, particularly sorry that Elmer and I were to grow up without sisters. Given our later isolation on the homestead, our separation from other boys and girls, it became natural to think of women as a species apart, an experience destined to leave a permanent mark on one’s attitude toward them.” In those days an acquaintance described John this way: “He was tall, slim, quiet, aloof, not aggressive, a very poor mixer.” The lawyer who was known for his powerful performance in court was not so powerful on the dance floor.

John became infatuated with Olive Freeman, the young daughter of the minister at First Baptist Church in Saskatoon. He gathered up all his courage and asked her for a date, but she moved with her family to Brandon in 1921 before he could pursue a relationship. Diefenbaker later became engaged to a woman named Beth Newell, but she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and died in 1924.

John himself still suffered from his own physical weaknesses. After several minor hospital stays he travelled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and had surgery for a gastric ulcer, which led to some improvement in his health. He didn’t stop working though, and he soon felt it was time to perform on a bigger stage: Prince Albert.

Prince Albert in 1924 was a raucous frontier city booming with money, politics, and law cases. Once it had dreamed of being the capital of the North-West Territories, and now it was a gateway to the riches of northern Saskatchewan. The law office door on the second floor of the red brick Bank d’Hochelaga building on Second Avenue read: John G. Diefenbaker Law Office – Walk In. Inside were two used bookcases, a gooseneck lamp, and an oversized desk. Looming behind that desk was John Diefenbaker, now a seasoned veteran of the daily battles in court.

He took on any case that came his way: bad debts, estates, minor thefts, assault, insurance claims, and slander. Not all as exciting as defending someone against a charge of murder, but he was in a city now. Residents of Prince Albert soon grew accustomed to seeing a confident young lawyer in a three-piece suit striding up and down the streets, or driving his 1927 Chrysler Sedan.

He did make enemies. T.C. Davis, who was a Liberal, the attorney general of the province, and the owner of the Prince Albert Herald, didn’t much like Diefenbaker, especially because of Diefenbaker’s support of the Conservative party. In fact, when Diefenbaker’s court cases were written up in the Herald, Diefenbaker discovered the reporters wouldn’t mention his name; they just called him “a lawyer from Prince Albert.” Clients came to him anyway, despite the lack of press.

A slight, pretty young schoolteacher stood on a train platform in Saskatoon. Red hair. A fashionable dress. A light laugh. It was enough to make a young man fall in love.

That’s exactly what happened to John. John was introduced to Edna May Brower through his brother. Edna was a “flapper,” a term used at the time to describe a woman who was free-willed and unconventional. She wore the latest fashions and loved social events, and though she was engaged to a Langham farmer, she soon only had eyes for John. As one friend explained it, Edna’s photograph album, which was filled with pictures of Edna with other men, eventually only had pictures of her and John, swimming, laughing, and picnicking together.

Not everyone saw why these two opposites were attracted to each other. A teaching colleague, Molly Connell, recalled: “His eyes, they just bored right through you. They were like steel; hard eyes. There was never any tenderness or warmth about John Diefenbaker. I felt it then, but one does not say that to a good friend who may be in love with him.”

There were others who also didn’t understand, but the couple grew closer and closer together.

On a still summer night, John and Edna are alone in the moonlight. They sit with hands entwined. Here is a woman he can trust. In his quietest voice he whispers about how awkward he feels in public and tells her of his wish to become prime minister, because it is “more than a goal; it is my destiny.”

Like John’s mother so many years before, Edna does not laugh. She looks at this man who is a hawk in court but a wallflower in social situations. She sees the ambition in his eyes. Desire. She knows it will be hard to teach him how to relax in public. To remember people’s names. But she is a good teacher. They begin discussing how this goal can be accomplished.

In the spring of 1929 in Walmer Road Baptist Church in Toronto, John George Diefenbaker and Edna May Brower were married. The wedding was in Toronto because that was where Edna’s brother’s lived.

John suddenly emerged from his shell. At the reception he moved through the crowd with Edna, talking, joking, shaking hands and hugging her. Not a trace of aloofness. Not even an awkward moment. And to top it all off, he even danced with Edna.

That put to rest the gossip that she had chosen a dud.

They returned to Prince Albert and John continued his career. But with the support of his wife, he was a stronger man.

And his legal practice had grown by leaps and bounds. He now employed two lawyers and eight secretaries and had a yearly take-home pay of $4573.00. He was one of Saskatchewan’s most prosperous lawyers.

A shotgun blast in the middle of the day. Nick Pasowesty, a successful farmer, was murdered on his own land. No one knew who pulled the trigger, but an RCMP investigation found the family weapon that fired the shell and discovered that Pasowesty was highly disliked by his neighbor and had a rather rocky relationship with his third wife, Annie. The Mounties dug deeper and quickly focused on the youngest son, John, a spendthrift seventeen-year-old who had apparently bragged about shooting his dad.

After a brief interrogation, the boy confessed to the crime. A week later he changed his tune, saying his mother had pulled the trigger. “She told me that I should say that I have killed my old man because I might get out of it somehow because she would get some lawyers for me.”

That lawyer turned out to be John Diefenbaker and this was his first murder case. He faced an uphill climb – the trial judge was Mr. Justice George E. Taylor, who had been intimidating defence lawyers for over forty years. He preferred prosecution to leniency and Diefenbaker had butted heads with him a number of times in the past.

John first questioned Annie on the stand, but several lines of inquiry were shot down by the judge. Next Diefenbaker tried to convince the judge that the boy’s first confession was inadmissible because the boy was under stress and had been arrested without being allowed to speak to his family. The judge cut Diefenbaker off and explained that the confession would stand: “I must say that I feel so convinced that I could not hope that any further consideration of the matter would alter the conclusion at which I have arrived.”

Diefenbaker began to sweat. He had to put doubt in the jury’s mind by implicating the boy’s mother. Unfortunately Diefenbaker had made a serious mistake, he hadn’t subpoenaed the RCMP officer who wrote down the boy’s second confession. Diefenbaker had believed the prosecution would call the officer. Too late, Diefenbaker asked to call his witness up. The judge disallowed the request and rebuked Diefenbaker in front of the whole courtroom. “If you want evidence,” the judge lectured, “it is your duty to get it yourself. Proceed please.”

Diefenbaker had only one choice left. He put the boy in the witness box. The prosecution carefully and politely tore holes in the boy’s suggestion that his mother was the killer. By the time the prosecution was finished, the boy looked like a cunning murderer.

“Annie Pasowesty,” Diefenbaker said in his closing arguments, “committed this crime. A schemer, a plotter, she contrived an arrangement where she could kill her husband and throw suspicion upon her son. And worse. Then she induced this boy to confess to the crime, to take that responsibility upon himself and steer all suspicion away from her.” He hoped his words would be enough to put doubt in the minds of the jury.

The prosecution continued to insist the boy could not be believed. The judge echoed that conclusion.

Five hours later the jury returned with a verdict of guilty and the judge sentenced John Pasowesty to be hanged at Prince Albert jail on February 21, 1930.

It was a loss, but Diefenbaker, who disliked capital punishment, had one final ace to play. He had a psychiatrist examine the boy. The conclusion: John Pasowesty had a mental age of eight or nine years.

With this new information John petitioned the federal cabinet for clemency, and the boy’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

“I knew I wouldn’t die,” John Pasowesty sobbed as he clutched the telegram from Ottawa. “I don’t know about spending the rest of my life in jail, but I think I’ll like it better than hanging.”

For Diefenbaker, it was almost a victory.

The Pasowesty trial was immediately followed by Diefenbaker’s second murder case, which he took on without a fee. His client, a Polish immigrant named Alex Wysochan, was involved in a love triangle that ended with the death of Antena Kropa, and her husband was the only witness. Stanley Kropa’s version was that Alex Wysochan, his wife’s lover, had broken into the Kropa house while drunk and threatened to shoot him. Stanley leapt out a window then heard four shots and his wife’s anguished cry. The police arrived to find Antena fatally wounded, and her lover lying drunk beside her.

Wysochan, who spoke only through a Polish interpreter, had a different version of events. He said that Stanley had found him drinking at the Windsor Hotel and invited him home, then started a fight and pulled out a gun. Antena got between them, four shots rang out, and Antena crumpled to the ground. Wysochan collapsed in a drunken stupor.

Diefenbaker, who was suffering from his gastric ulcer and had been bedridden for parts of the trial, tried to convince the jury that Wysochan’s story was true. At first he advised his client to stay off the witness stand and say he didn’t remember anything of the night. That way the charges might be lowered to manslaughter and Wysochan would only have to spend ten years in jail. “I’m innocent, why should I?” Wysochan replied. He went to the stand. The jury, all men of British background, took an immediate dislike to this European immigrant who drank and had committed adultery.

“Admittedly, Alex Wysochan dishonoured the Kropa home,” Diefenbaker said in his closing arguments, “Admittedly, he was immoral in his relations with Antena Kropa. But he is not charged with these things. He is here today charged with the killing of Antena Kropa, the woman he loved and had no reason to kill.”

The prosecuting lawyer didn’t take a rational, calm approach to his closing arguments. Instead, he called Alex “this little rat,” “this reptile,” and “the dirty little coward.”

The jury convened for five hours, broke for the night, and in the morning returned with a guilty verdict. Wysochan was sentenced to the gallows and the judge immediately called up the next case. Diefenbaker just happened to represent the next defendant, too. He had a brutally hard day.

Diefenbaker filed an appeal for Wysochan’s verdict, but no reprieve was granted and Alex Wysochan was hanged in Prince Albert on June 20, 1930.

“A few months after the trial it was established that he was innocent,” Diefenbaker said in his memoirs. For him, to have a client hung was the ultimate failure. “My profound respect for human life is based on religious conviction. I do not believe in capital punishment.”

From 1930 to 1936 Diefenbaker fought four more murder cases. A woman accused of smothering her newborn child was found not guilty. A grand success. Diefenbaker was becoming a dramatic genius. He had learned how to use his penetrating eyes and to control his voice so the jury would hang on every word. Many a witness feared to face John in court.

Even the RCMP could be intimidated by Diefenbaker. “I was anything but the serene and confident Mountie I appeared to be,” admitted Constable Arthur Cookson, “It was his eyes most of all.”

Cookson was the investigating detective in the trial of Steve Bohun, a nineteen-year-old accused of shooting and robbing a postmaster. Diefenbaker defended Bohun, using every technique he had mastered. He wanted to prove that the Mounties had forced Bohun to confess. “Do you understand the nature of an oath?” he boomed, starting his cross-examination of Cookson. The constable was an impressive man decked out in his RCMP dress uniform of redcoat, breeches and high boots, but he soon felt flustered as Diefenbaker paced the floor or stood facing the spectators, firing questions over his shoulder for over an hour and a half. “You showed him the blood stains still upon the floor, the blood of the dead Peter Pommereul, didn’t you?” Diefenbaker accused. “And then, Constable Cookson, then you tried to force this young boy to put his hands upon those blood stains. What do you say to that?” Diefenbaker suddenly turned and thrust out a long accusatory finger. It was a move he would become famous for in the House of Commons.

“I did no such thing,” Cookson replied, rising to his feet. But a seed of doubt had been planted in the jury’s mind.

Diefenbaker was at his dramatic best but the jury found Bohun guilty, though they did ask for mercy because of his lack of intelligence. The judge sentenced him to hang.

On March 9, 1934, John walked out to his front porch. From there he had a view of the Prince Albert prison. A black flag was raised slowly up the flagpole, signalling Steve Bohun’s death. Diefenbaker wept, jaws clenched, tears staining his cheeks. “Poor devil,” he whispered, “poor, poor devil.”

In Diefenbaker’s next case, the violent murder of a farmer near Leask, the prosecution didn’t have enough evidence to continue the trial, so Diefenbaker won by default. Next came a front-page murder trial. Two trappers had gotten drunk, and in an argument over their take, one had shot the other dead. Diefenbaker was able to get the charge lowered to manslaughter because the culprit had been drinking.

John Diefenbaker had made a name for himself and had become the lawyer he wanted to be.

He had one more goal to achieve.

A shot of Edna in the 1930s,

stylish as always.

A 1933 ad urging the public

to meet Diefenbaker.