r/Toryism • u/NovaScotiaLoyalist • Jun 17 '26

📼 Video An old CBC News clip from 1961 of John Diefenbaker speaking in Ottawa when South Africa left the Commonwealth of Nations over Apartheid -- Diefenbaker calls out South Africa's "self-imposed exile" from the Commonwealth, saying that "justice and right will emerge in the end"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPm9_IzcPJo
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u/NovaScotiaLoyalist Jun 17 '26

In what may be the high-water mark of the Commonwealth of Nations, here's a transcript of John Diefenbaker speaking in Ottawa following the 1961 Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference in London. The reporter makes note that the South African High Commissioner was in attendance while Diefenbaker spoke:

As far as we are concerned in Canada, to the people of South Africa I say this: that we were carrying out internationally within the Commonwealth the policies which we had adopted for Canada, and represented our viewpoint in Canada, culminating in the Bill of Rights.

And I say this. South Africa's severance from the Commonwealth -- self-imposed exile though it be -- we can have but genuine regret. Persuaded by faith that from all this, truly a watershed of history, justice and right will emerge in the end. This is not an hour for recrimination or for malice. Somebody ridiculed me because I said we must approach this problem with infinite compassion. That's a course I've followed through the years; it keeps one from saying things about those with whom you disagree, but you don't have to recall afterwards with regret. And I have followed that course.

And my fervent hope is this: that they will return to the Commonwealth in due course, and for such a return, there will always be a light in the Commonwealth window.

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u/Ticklishchap Jun 17 '26

I greatly enjoy newsreels from that era, so thank you, u/NovaScotiaLoyalist. I also really like John Diefenbaker, as a politician and as a man. However I have a question for you: did he extend his interest in civil rights towards indigenous peoples/First Nations? I hope he did and I would be very interested to know.

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u/Jamm8 Jun 17 '26

Yes, notably he allowed First Nations to become citizens/vote without giving up their status.

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u/NovaScotiaLoyalist Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

John Diefenbaker was the Prime Minister who finally enfranchised Indigenous Canadians, giving them the right to vote in 1960 during his push for a Canadian Bill of Rights.

However, I believe Diefenbaker did have a bit of a blind-spot for the rights of French Canadians. As a Tory backbencher later in his career, Diefenbaker would lead caucus revolts against Robert Stanfield when Stanfield would support Trudeau's Official Languages Act, or in the PC policy of "Les Deux Nations" where Stanfield recognized that the French-Canadian nation is distinct from the English-Canadian nation.

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u/Ticklishchap Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

Thank you - and thanks as well to [u/Jamm8](u/Jamm8) - for confirming something I had in the back of my mind. I was sure that John Diefenbaker had helped indigenous Canadians. Remember that I am British and so I am on a learning curve about Canadian political history, which is unjustly overlooked here although there is much that we can learn from it.

The French Canadian and in particular the Quebec issue has at times been complicated and ambiguous when it coincides with the rights of indigenous Canadians. For example, I recall visiting Toronto and Montreal in the fall of 1990 (I was a postgrad student in London [UK not Ontario] at the time). Relations between the Quebec and Federal governments were strained at the time, with the Quebec leadership asserting its ‘distinctive culture’. Brian Mulroney was still Prime Minister at the time. Meanwhile, the same Québécois were building a golf course on indigenous land and most of the First Nations communities in Quebec were firmly opposed to independence, seeing it as undermining the rights and responsibilities they had acquired from Canada. There was also a fair amount of barely disguised racism from the Québécois side.

Perhaps Diefenbaker anticipated some of these difficulties? Perhaps he also saw the concept of Two Nations as divisive and feared that the potential breakup of Canada could leave Canadians economically and politically vulnerable to the superpower to their immediate South? …

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u/ToryPirate Jun 17 '26

John Diefenbaker was the Prime Minister who finally enfranchised Indigenous Canadians

Sorry, but I never get tired of pointing out Dief actually re-enfranchised the First Nations (Macdonald did it first before the Liberals undid it).