Was William Lyon Mackenzie King Canada’s greatest leader?

Was William Lyon Mackenzie King Canada’s greatest leader?

Also Canadian history general

He wasnt'?

Autistic Liberal thinker.

Canada's greatest leader?

I am going to say Borden or Harper. Seriously.

harper is super underrated because he is hated and demonized by the media, but greatest ever? i really liked the guy but i wouldn't go that far.
>borden
arguably the most deeply corrupt PM ever. how was he the greatest?

>copies england and USA

wow what a country.

Their past year in politics has been based on which candidate virtue signaled the best with no emphasis AT ALL on actual policy.

Can we all agree that the worst PM we've had was Kim Campbell

it has been so incredibly disappointing no matter which party you back.
>libs: diversity means importing cheap foregin labour and trade deals with china
>cons: let's back the socon wing that the rest of canada loathes, and fight the libs on matters only the socons care about
>ndp: let's have the campaign socialists tell the blue-collar workers what their concerns actually are
>greens: we still have elizabeth may as our leader

i can, sadly, understand the rest but not the greens. she's taken that party nowhere in ages, and runs it like the party of elizabeth may which is a serious drawback since she is such a kook.

yeah, but it's a bit hard to blame her when mulroney left her at the helm of a sinking ship.

TAKE ME BACK
TO THE GOOD OLD DAYS

>Harper

Harper

Level headed navigation of 2008 crash.
Abandoned useless peacekeeping in favor of useful military action.
Did his best(and way better than most) in procurement for military.
Monarchist
Hated and threatened the CBC, Canadas propoganda arm
Was more against the unregulated refugee migrants than any party leader

Highly respected on world stage.

Dude made me proud to be a Canadian.

The worst thing he did was lose to a young drama teacher.

Mackenzie King was quite literally on the spectrum. Look him up.

Admittedly I only said Borden because the fact he made a law disallowing titles for Canadian citizens. No lords, knights dukes etc. No class society for Canada, at least overtly. Granted I wasn't aware of the corruption.

That would be George W. Bush.

>disallowing titles for Canadian citizens
That's fucking stupid.

>copies
They're Americans who stayed loyal to the Crown. Who exactly are they copying? Themselves? Anglo North Americans didn't form in a vacuum. It's sad to see how far Canada has fallen politically but saying they copied England/America is disingenuous at best

I would rate him 3rd after Wilfred Laurier then good ol' John A. Macdonald

On the topic of Macdonald, it sucks that he's gonna get removed from the $10 bill to make room for some black womyn who nobody's heard of

It's 2017, dead old white guys are like soooo uncool and unhip.

the days when World's Fairs were relevant?

>DUDE OIL MONEY LMAO (obviously in their pockets)
>no reason to fight in Afghanistan - it was and always will be a shit-sink with no significance to Canada
>DUDE ISRAEL LMAO
>Libya...again, why?
>increase in temporary foreign workers (people with no incentive to integrate or engage with society at-large), and foreigners buying up Canadian real estate

that being said, i agree with most of your post, particularly his financial policy
harper is underrated by most of society/media
and props to him for helping regroup the conservatives after the 90s and leading them to consistent success

Wouldn't surprise me if Cuckstin Trudeau announced that all Canadian money will feature gay Muslim trans women of colour

i could go either way on the titles issue desu. as far as corruption goes, the dude rigged the 1917 election.

No, the days when Vancouver wasn't such a crowded overpriced offshore billionaire money hideyhole.

desu i really wouldn't mind women or "diversity"(whatever the fuck that means anymore) on our money if the accomplishments they've being celebrated for weren't so fucking mundane and mediocre. it almost feels like mocking them with this over-the-top celebration of banality.

But there aren't any "diverse" people who have done anything notable enough to get put on money.

at least vancouver still has those mountains and the ocean

imagine how toronto must feel

Never heard this before, how did he rig the 1917 election?

i'm quite aware, i just don't think lowering the standards is the answer. makes any further accomplishments of theirs unfairly have an asterisk on them and be questioned endlessly on their validity. we could put tecumseh on the money, but he might be too far back in time.

did it in two ways.
1.) gave the vote to women, but only to women serving in the war effort or who had family serving in the canadian or british war effort - this demograph was heavily predisposed to vote for the incumbent borden government, and they did so en masse.
2.) this was the real bad one. made the overseas canadian army vote into one box, and then redistributed it as the incumbent government liked to ridings across canada, even if the person voting was not actually from that riding. this ensured they could swing ridings everywhere, and did. also ballots simply said "government" or "opposition" - no candidates listed, nor any other parties.

Damn. I knew about the first one and I don't really counts as "rigging" but I had no idea about the second. He extremely corrupt but I still think Borden was one of the best Prime Ministers

i can see the first one either way desu, but i lean a bit more to the corruption side because of how cynical it was. though i guess it did reflect society's values at the time

Does anyone else here somewhat admire the Trudeaus despite being mostly conservative?
Pierre was basically Canada’s Otto Von Bismarck in the way that he appeased the social forces present at the time while ultimately remaining extremely pragmatic in how he ran the state. So far it seems like Justin has had the exact same strategy as his father, putting up a liberal facade to appease the social left while below the surface actually being extremely non-ideological and strategic.
I don’t know though I might just be projecting, what’s Veeky Forums‘s opinion on the Trudeaus?

trudeau sr:
pros
>really, really good with canadian society
>masterfully dealt with the FLQ crisis and separatism as a whole
>good moral victory in getting the charter
>superb for our image abroad
>generally helped forge the current canadian identity
cons:
>absolute dogshit-tier economically
>massively inflated the debt to absurd proportions
>kicked off western separatism and albertan multi-generational butthurt for no good reason
>the charter, while it is nice to have it, is a fundamentally flawed document that is nigh impossible to change. this could have huge ramifications down the line as it just even trying to change it will become a crisis, and it will need updating eventually. it should change eventually anyways, it would suck if canada fell into the trap of worshiping it semi-religiously like the americans do with their constitution
>started the trend of gutting and starving our military

trudeau jr
pros
>really, really, really good abroad. harper was mediocre abroad, and trudeau jr is doing wonders out there.
>economy actually doing fairly decently
>handles trump masterfully
cons:
>use the term "diversity" in a very cynical way that is very slowly stoking the flames. ie, temporary foreign workers getting citizenship is the type of "diversity" that pisses everybody off, QC investor program going unimpeded, though this started before him
>refuses to fix the structural economic problems like rampant real estate speculation in BC and toronto that is hollowing out their economies
>absolutely terrible with the military like his father
>while our image is good abroad, many of our "commitments" abroad are token at best and purely designed to shore up the liberal brand back in canada
>WAY too careless and reckless when it comes to deal with china. ie, the ITF purchase by china that was flagged by CSIS but ignored by trudeau anyways
>negotiating a free trade deal with china that is sure to screw most canadians
>a big chunk of his policy is done for image

so, a mixed bag. trudeau sr. more good than bad, trudeau jr. more bad than good.

>>absolutely terrible with the military like his father
one of his big projects for the military is trying to boost the amount of female recruits for peacekeeping operations.
meanwhile our navy is in shambles, our jet fighters are so decrepit they're literally falling out of the sky, and our current issued handgun for the army is literally from WW2.

I like Lester B. Pearson.

>Put Canada on the path of enacting foreign policy independent from the "motherland"
>Organized one of the few truly successful UN peacekeeping missions
>Enacted universal health care and the social safety net
>Introduced the points-based immigration system

He changed the Canadian flag to the awful leaf. so in my mind, he's the worst

>>Enacted universal health care and the social safety net
>Good

>universal health care
>bad

>unironically being a socialist

some next level projection you have there lad. anyways, healthcare is actually one of the truly few things socialism can do better than capitalism. people just get gouged like crazy otherwise, and burdening people with huge medical bills sucks for the economy.

I don't know much about Canadian history but want to learn more. What are the best survey works on Canadian history? And what are some good ones about Alberta and Saskatchewan?

Retarded.

Just because Justin Trudeau is awful doesn't mean Harper was good.

I was doing some research on Pearson recently for a uni project and I came across a really great story with him and LBJ.

>Pearson spoke at Temple University in Philadelphia on 2 April 1965, while visiting the United States and voiced his support for a pause in the American bombing of North Vietnam, so that a diplomatic solution to the crisis may unfold.

>To President Lyndon B. Johnson, this criticism of American foreign policy on American soil was an intolerable sin. Before Pearson had finished his speech, he was summoned to Camp David, Maryland, to meet with Johnson the next day.

>Johnson, who was notorious for his personal touch in politics, reportedly grabbed Pearson by the lapels and shouted, "Don't you come into my living room and piss on my rug."[16][17] Pearson later recounted that the meeting was acrimonious, but insisted the two parted cordially.

Love Pearson though, he accomplished a ton during his time in office.

leaf bump

this so much, the funny part is from what i have seen most immigrants agree totally with conservative platform but vote lib cuz they think the conservatives are racist.

Texas despite only briefly existing as an independent nation literally produced more interesting historical leaders than Canada.

This. I live bouncing between Vancouver and Toronto and can confirm that Toronto is shittier

>DUDE OIL MONEY LMAO (obviously in their pockets)
Oil money revitalized the economy of three traditionally impoverished and decrepit provinces. Meanwhile Ontario's anti-industry economic policies has turned the province into one of the biggest financial blackholes in North America

>no reason to fight in Afghanistan - it was and always will be a shit-sink with no significance to Canada
The War in Afghanistan was started long before Harper became Prime Minister

>DUDE ISRAEL LMAO
He showed solidarity with civilized countries across the globe, and Israel happened to be the one that was under attack the most. He took a similar hardline stance in Ukraine.

>Libya...again, why?
Admittedly a mistake but don't forget Canada has NATO priorities.

>increase in temporary foreign workers (people with no incentive to integrate or engage with society at-large), and foreigners buying up Canadian real estate
I would argue this had much more to do with the governments of Christie Clark in BC and Kathleen Wynne in Ontario, who were both absolute disasters in their respective provinces most notable for their unprecedented levels of corruption.

you know how you know someone is from texas? they'll tell you long before you even think to give a fuck

lester b. bump here

almost all of Alberta and Sask was uninhabited (except for Naitives) before 1890
Then the wheat boom started and the CPR was built.
Look up papers on the wheat boom

historically the big reason has been the liberals passing the family reunification laws allowing them to bring over their useless parents who just act as huge burden on our healthcare system.

i feel like a lot of immigrants/minorities in canada just vote for whatever suits their ethnic group best, and not the rest of canada. the whole NDP leadership election recently really drives this point home where jagmeet singh just registered all the sikhs of surrey, bc, and mississauge, on, to the NDP party to rig the leadership vote.

>Harper
>useful military action

Speaking of great Canadian leaders, pic related.

No, Sir Sam Hughs was the finest leader to ever grace Canadian soil. Seconded only to John Turner, Joe Clark and Kim Campbell in a 3 way tie.

byng > currie
you cannot prove me wrong

lol

Whether that's true or not is beside the point, Byng wasn't a Canadian.

If you're interested at all in British Columbia, Margaret Ormsby's British Columbia: A History is probably the most prominent work on the subject, and fairly thorough. I found it interesting.

Harper also killed the gun registry. But more importantly, he killed the per vote subsidy for political parties. No more paying tax money to fringe political views. Your party shouldnt be relevant if your base cannot fund it.

Canadian here

No, that would be John A. MacDonald or Wilfred Laurier.

On a side note. I know nothing of his policies, but my favorite looking Prime Minister was John Thompson. Look at this smarmy asshole.

looks fat desu. i don't like fat people.

lol and this guy is on our $100 bill

>wanting a murderer to represent you
Fuck off back to /pol/

He also raised the AoC from 14 to 16.

he was quite literally in contact with paranormal forces and took policy advice from ghosts. look it up.

>started the trend of gutting and starving our military
This isn't a bad thing, tho. Canada's military can never really function as anything other than an auxiliary for greater powers, so the ideal Canadian military is one that figures out a niche and becomes as competent within that niche as is possible.

Everyone who is not a soyboy nu male millennial like myself must be le /pol/ boogeyman

I'm interested in the wheat boom and agrarian co-op movements there. Can you recommend any papers on that? Thanks.
Thanks.

>So far it seems like Justin has had the exact same strategy as his father, putting up a liberal facade to appease the social left while below the surface actually being extremely non-ideological and strategic.
>I don’t know though I might just be projecting, what’s Veeky Forums‘s opinion on the Trudeaus?

That's what all Liberals do since the adoption of the Third Way in the 90's. Canadians just do it better than most.

My family only arrived in Canada after his premiership, and I'm no separatist, but the man had balls and was worthy of respect.

RIP.

I'm still mad at Mulcair fucking up on the niqab issue and handing over the election to Trudeau to be honest.

Official top tier P.M list
John A. MacDonald
Wilfred Laurier
W.L Mackenzie-King
Lester B. Pearson
Pierre Elliot Trudeau
Jean Chretien

Mid Tier
St. Laurent
Borden
Mulroney
Diefenbaker
Harper

Low Tier
Meighen
Martin
Alexander Mackenzie

Worst of the Worst:
Kim Campbell
Joe Clark
John Turner
John Thompson
John Abbott
Mackenzie Bowell
R.B Bennett

>Harper

in 2015 I voted Green in the federal election and when my friends asked why I said "an anti-vaccine 9/11 truther who's afraid of Wi-Fi would still be preferable to Harper, Mulcair or Trudeau"

2/10

I wish Caron won the NDP leadership, he actually tackled issues that the working class cared about.

Selectively curating social programs for certain aspects of society that have historically been poorly served by free market capitalism is not the same as full socialism.

How do you feel about Singh?

t. Shlomo

I feel like he's good on a lot of points, but he's using identity politics a bit too much, and it won't serve him. I personally like him, but I feel like he's going to lead to the party stalling.

If the NDP wants to make a comeback, they need to recover what they lost in Quebec, which means putting the focus for minority rights on the backburner and emphasizing that they are the party of the working class and of popular economics. Singh being openly (and most of all, visibly) religious doesn't go well with most of the Quebecois secularists, I'm afraid. Unless he has a Laytonesque Tout le Monde en Parle moment, he's sure to end up third.

I shook his hand after the Montreal debate, seemed like a nice guy. Will either vote for him or for the Bloc, depending on which of the two has a better chance of defeating the Liberals next elections.

Better Singh than Ashton, though.

>>kicked off western separatism

Western separatism is a meme that'll never lead to anything.

Wow what an amazing and insightful argument.

You must have felt pretty euphoric to advance such a developed critique of every party's policies and an even more elaborate examination of potential solutions.

Good for you!

Yeah that's pretty much how I feel as well.

I'm pleasantly surprised, I was expecting a shitpost about pajeets or something.

Not a lib here, but Harper really screwed over Canada by not diversifying Canadian economy and industry, instead developing only fake economic growth like real estate, which is currently very negatively affecting provinces like BC, who have unlimited natural resource potential, and yet still have shit like real estate and tourism as their largest economic sector.

I must however give him credit for keeping Canada less affected than some by 2008 though, along with a good step in the direction of logical and better firearm laws. It's a shame that he allowed himself to crash so hard in the public before the election, ensuring a disastrous lib majority rule so far.

also his bill about legalizing unrestricted government surveillance was very scummy

>economy actually doing fairly decently
hahahahahaha nice one
dude let's just sell off our entire fucking gold reserve lmao
>handles trump masterfully
by sending out passive aggressive tweets and zuccbook posts? he is entirely passing up working with Trump economically because he fears that it will damage his liberal bulwark image
>brilliant on world stage abroad
wearing moronic socks, selling off the country, and making superficial courtesy visits to random countries doesn't make him useful to Canada abroad

>niqab (((issue)))
Islamists should be deported regardless.

>NDP
Commie fuckos.

>by sending out passive aggressive tweets and zuccbook posts? he is entirely passing up working with Trump economically because he fears that it will damage his liberal bulwark image
If you seriously think that Trudeau is antagonizing Trump due to his Facebook comments, you seriously need to stop getting your news from social media and start looking into his policy, specifically his trade policy with our southern neighbours. Hell, Fox sent out a desperate cry asking Trudeau not to backstab Mexico in favour of the US during the upcoming NAFTA talks just the other day.

>wearing moronic socks, selling off the country, and making superficial courtesy visits to random countries doesn't make him useful to Canada abroad
You have no idea how popular Trudeau is abroad with real, non image board dwelling people.

>If you seriously think that Trudeau is antagonizing Trump due to his Facebook comments, you seriously need to stop getting your news from social media and start looking into his policy, specifically his trade policy with our southern neighbours. Hell, Fox sent out a desperate cry asking Trudeau not to backstab Mexico in favour of the US during the upcoming NAFTA talks just the other day.
and yet, all of his meetings and talks with Trump have not yielded anything in Canada's favor yet

>You have no idea how popular Trudeau is abroad with real, non image board dwelling people.
I'm a foreigner, I very well know how he is perceived in many parts outside Canada, as a weak obnoxious prettyboy populist who's bending over for everyone to acknowledge him

People do recognize that Trudeau is center-right, yes? All the #woke virtue-signaling is just him trying to distract people from the TPP and Keystone XL pipeline.

>and yet, all of his meetings and talks with Trump have not yielded anything in Canada's favor yet
He managed to get Trump to lay off the softwood lumber and dairy supply management rants for now, Trump seems very appreciative of him too.

>I'm a foreigner, I very well know how he is perceived in many parts outside Canada, as a weak obnoxious prettyboy populist who's bending over for everyone to acknowledge him
>he seriously believes that
Unless you live in Eastern Europe, step out of your closed social circle and you'll see that's clearly not the case.

People in Canada do, I'm pretty certain.

People outside of Canada most certainly do not.

WE GONNA ROCK DOWN TO ELECTRIC AVENUE

>Unless you live in Eastern Europe, step out of your closed social circle and you'll see that's clearly not the case.

Not him, but I have friends and colleagues from Ukraine, China, Philippines, and Korea, and all of them tell me, though to differing degrees and in different words, that Trudeau is almost universally seen in their own countries, as a child among those on the world stage, as a joke regarding what he is doing in his own country, and a minor convenience to the countries of those who I am mentioning

you can continue believing what you want though, not that canadian liberals live in echo chambers or anything

>the third world
>mattering

>china
>responsible for 90% of your economy
>responsible for 99% of your west coast economy
>owns 90% of your west coast real estate
>accounts for 90% of your west coast population
>not relevant
lol

Hi /pol/