Robert Laird Borden: Source of National Vision … or Division? Sir Robert Laird Borden (1854-1937) served as the eighth prime minister of Canada from 1911-1920. A self-made man, he rebuild the Conservative Party and led it to victory in the divisive 1911 election. As wartime prime minister, his record was controversial: he fought stridently for Canada’s voice and influence in the British Empire, but his decisions also caused deep divisions in Canadian society. Did Canada “come of age” under his leadership, or did it come apart? Back to Lecture Outline

* Lecture Notes *

PowerPoint Slides

Reading:

Robert Craig Brown, "Borden, Sir Robert Laird," in DCB

or Bliss, Right Honourable Men, ch.3.

Basic Facts:

Born
• 26 June 1854, Grand Pre, Nova Scotia

Education
• Acacia Villa Academy, Horton, Nova Scotia

Personal Status
• Married 1889, Laura Bond (1863 - 1940)

Occupation
• Teacher, at age 14, of classics and mathematics at private academies in Nova Scotia and New Jersey
• 1874 Articled law clerk in Halifax (called to the Bar in 1878)
• 1890 Became head of a large Halifax law firm
• 1924 - 1930 Chancellor, Queen's University
• 1928 Appointed President, Crown Life Insurance Company
• 1930 President, Canadian Historical Association
• Author

Party
• Conservative
• 1901 - 1920 Party Leader
• 1917 - 1920 Union Government (A coalition of pro-conscription Liberals and Conservatives)

Other Ministries
• 1911 - 1917 President of the Privy Council
• 1912 - 1920 External Affairs

Political Record
• War Measures Act 1914
• Income War Tax Act 1917
• Military Service Act 1917
• Principal author of Resolution IX of the 1917 Imperial War Conference
• Leader of Canadian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference 1919
• Led Canada as Prime Minister throughout First World War 1914 -1918

Died
• 10 June 1937, Ottawa, Ontario

Further Reading:

Borden, H. ed, Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs (1938)

---. Letters to Limbo (1971)

Borden, R. Canadian Constitutional Studies (1922)

---. Canada in the Commonwealth (1929)

Brown, R. Craig. Robert Laird Borden, 2 vols (1975, 1980).

English, John. The Decline of Politics: The Conservatives and the Party System, 1901-20. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1977.

---. "Political Leadership in the First World War," in Canada and the First World War: Essays in Honour of Robert Craig Brown ed. D. Mackenzie (2005)

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