A native son makes a big swing for peace
Lester B. Pearson launched historic social programs such as pension plan, universal health care
His 1897 launch into the world was modest — a home birth in a church manse near Yonge St. and Finch Ave. But Lester Bowles “Mike” Pearson would grow up to become one of Toronto’s most renowned sons — the only Canadian to win a Nobel Peace Prize and the prime minister who would usher in the country’s most momentous social programs.
Universal health care, the Canada Pension Plan, the Maple Leaf flag, Canada Student Loans — these are some of the milestone programs for which Canadians can thank our 14th prime minister.
How did the son of a humble Methodist minister scale such lofty heights?
Pearson credited a happy, tight-knit family for giving him a good start. He was close to his parents, Edwin and Annie (née Bowles), and brothers Marmaduke and Vaughan. His parents advised him to be “kind and understanding to people I passed on the way up since I would no doubt meet them on the way down again,” he wrote in his memoir, Mike, The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Lester B. Pearson (published in 1972).
The parsonage where Pearson was born was located in the then-village of Newtonbrook (a plaque on a commercial building on Yonge, just north of Finch, marks the site.)
The family didn’t stay there long, as his father ministered at different parsonages in southern Ontario.
A good student, 16-year-old Pearson got into U of T’s Victoria College in 1913, the year before the First World War began. He enlisted in 1915, eventually training in England as a pilot. That’s when young Pearson got the nickname “Mike”, which he used throughout his life.
“My squadron commander felt that Lester was no name for an aspiring fighter pilot and decided to call me Mike,” Pearson wrote in his memoirs. “It stuck and I was glad to lose Lester.”
While in London for pilot training, Pearson was struck by a bus during a blackout and sent back to Canada to recuperate.
He later resumed his education at U of T, and in 1923 became a history lecturer at the University of Toronto. One day, Maryon Moody — four years younger and the daughter of a Winnipeg doctor — enrolled in his class. They were soon dating and married in 1925.
Pearson once joked that witty, intelligent and outspoken Maryon married him “to get through her final year . . . she did get through that year, but how she got through the last 40, I’ll never know.’’
She may have got through political campaigns, but Maryon never liked them. Proof of that was written in Maryon’s obituary in the Toronto Star in 1989. During a 1962 campaign stop, Pearson asked an audience if there was anything they wanted to bring up and Maryon muttered, “the last 10 cups of coffee.”
Pearson appreciated his wife and lauded her in his memoirs. “Without her love and help . . . I would never have reached a position where I would be writing this story.”
After they married and had two children, Geoffrey and Patricia, Pearson explored other career prospects.
He wrote the Department of External Affairs foreign service exam, finished first and was hired in 1928. He later joined the office staff of then Prime Minister R.B. Bennett.
Pearson’s star was rising. In 1935, thenPrime Minister Mackenzie King sent him to London, England, as second-incommand to the Canadian High Commissioner Vincent Massey.
King would later make a peculiar request of Pearson. After a night of German bombing in 1941, London’s historic Westminster Hall was badly damaged. The next day, Pearson got a “secret” telegram requesting Pearson ask the British for
After months of failing to find a diplomatic solution to the Suez Crisis, the UN General Assembly approved Pearson’s idea of sending the world’s first peacekeeping force to Egypt. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957
some of the stones from the damaged Westminister for “his own ruins at Kingsmere.” King had a country estate in Quebec, where he had a collection of ruins. Pearson wrote in his memoir that the request was granted and the stones were shipped back to Canada by submarine.
In 1945, the same year the United Nations was created, Pearson was appointed Canada’s ambassador to the United States. He was one of the leading diplomats of the time.
Pearson returned to Canada in1946 and worked under Louis St. Laurent, who was secretary of state for external affairs. He entered politics, winning a byelection in Algoma East for the Liberals in 1948 and became secretary of state for external affairs in Prime Minister Laurent’s government.
Pearson signed Canada’s first peacetime military alliance — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.
His highest honour lay ahead. In 1947, Israel, Britain and France had launched a military operation in Egypt, aimed at removing Egyptian president Gamal Nasser and controlling the nationalized Suez Canal. The U.S. was furious. After months of failing to find a diplomatic solution, the UN General Assembly approved Pearson’s idea of sending the world’s first peacekeeping force to Egypt. The invaders withdrew. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for helping to resolve the Suez Crisis.
Pearson became leader of the Liberals in 1958 and formed a minority government in 1963. Over the next five years, Pearson shepherded through Parliament a notable legacy of legislation, including the Medical Care Act of 1966, creating universal health care.
Pearson emphasized Canadian independence in foreign policy, resisting U.S. pressure to join the Vietnam War. After proposing the U.S. pause its bombing of North Vietnam to allow for a diplomatic solution during a visit to Philadelphia University on April 2, 1965, a livid President Lyndon Johnson summoned Pearson to Camp David where he reportedly grabbed him by the lapels and said: “Don’t you come into my living room and piss on my rug.”
Pearson also had a run-in with French president Charles de Gaulle, but in his own living room. On July 24, 1967, de Gaulle ended a speech in Montreal shouting the separatist slogan, “Vive le Quebec libre.”
Pearson’s anger reached “boiling point,” the Star reported. He went on TV the next day, blasting the remark as “unacceptable.” De Gaulle quickly departed.
Pearson oversaw the celebrations for Canada’s centenary in 1967. The year also marked his exit from politics.
He died in 1972. In 1979, the United Nations inaugurated an annual award, the Pearson Medal of Peace, which recognizes an individual Canadian’s contribution to international service.