Sir Robert Borden

Sir Robert Borden (born June 26, 1854, Grand Pré, Nova Scotia [Canada]—died June 10, 1937, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) was the eighth prime minister of Canada (1911–20) and leader of the Conservative Party (1901–20), who played a decisive role—notably by insisting on separate Canadian membership in the League of Nations—in transforming the status of his country from that of colony to that of nation. He was knighted in 1914.

Borden cut short his formal education before his 15th year, when he accepted the post of assistant master of the private school he was attending. His teaching career ended in 1874, when he became articled to a Halifax law firm. Admitted to the bar of Nova Scotia in 1878, he rose to a commanding position in legal circles, and after his marriage to Laura Bond (1889) he founded a law firm that acquired one of the largest practices in the Maritime Provinces. His friendship with Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, son of one of the original “Fathers of Confederation,” led him to accept the conservative nomination for Halifax in 1896. Borden’s entry into politics coincided with the victory of the Liberal Party under the leadership of Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Though he remained an obscure backbench opposition member during his first term, Borden was invited by the caucus upon his reelection in 1900 to assume temporarily the leadership of the party. He accepted the post, and, despite repeated intrigues against his leadership and his own professions of distaste for it, occupied it until 1911, when the Liberal decision to accept a reciprocal trade agreement with the United States led to Laurier’s defeat.

As prime minister, Borden’s major interest was Anglo-Canadian relations. He had long argued for the establishment of a Canadian voice in imperial policy. His naval policy before World War I—which involved a grant of $35 million to Britain for the construction of three battleships—was a mixture of opportunism and wishful thinking about the extension of Canada’s influence in the councils of empire. During the first two years of war Borden frequently referred to the necessity of Canadian participation in British decisions, but it was not until the British prime minister David Lloyd George created the Imperial War Cabinet (IWC) in 1917 that Borden was given a chance to express Canada’s point of view. At the meetings of the IWC in London and its subsequent sessions in Paris during the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles, Borden supported the Fourteen Points of U.S. president Woodrow Wilson and argued that Canada’s interests demanded the closest possible alliance between the British Empire and the United States. (Borden saw nothing incompatible between insisting on the right to participate in shaping imperial policy and Canada’s independent membership in the League of Nations. He seemed to envisage the empire-commonwealth as an alliance in which smaller members might have to defer to the interests of the great power, but only after a process of continuous consultation.)

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Borden’s Conservative administration confronted unprecedented administrative, financial, and political challenges during the years of World War I, and when, despite the voluntary recruitment of half a million Canadians for overseas service, conscription was required to maintain the Canadian forces at full strength, he initiated the formation of a coalition government. The success of the Unionist forces in the election of 1917 ensured a continuation of Borden’s policies of total commitment to the war effort and an international role for Canada—but at the price of antagonizing the French-Canadian population, who were unrepresented in the government and opposed to its policies.

Borden’s preoccupation with Anglo-Canadian relations may partly account for his first administration’s poor performance in domestic affairs. He dealt indecisively with his controversial minister of militia, Sam Hughes, whom he did not remove from office until late in 1916. As charges of incompetence, patronage, and war profiteering were leveled against Borden’s government, public confidence in him decreased. His decision, however, to form a coalition government in order to implement conscription gave him the opportunity to reconstruct his cabinet and to surround himself with a group of able colleagues. With Arthur Meighen, his successor as prime minister, to manage the House of Commons and with two Liberals, Newton Rowell and Alexander K. Maclean, in charge of key cabinet committees, Borden was free to concentrate on the larger questions under discussion in London and Paris. He supported Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, in which he was anxious to have Canadian troops participate. Public opinion forced the return of a 3,000-man expeditionary force from Vladivostok, which Borden had hoped would establish a Canadian presence leading eventually to trade concessions. His policy of arresting the leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike (1919) and of charging them under a revised definition of sedition that was rushed through Parliament in the form of an amendment to the criminal code won him the enmity of labour. He resigned in July 1920.

In retirement he attended the Washington Naval Disarmament Conference (1921) as Canada’s delegate and wrote Canadian Constitutional Studies (1922) and Canada in the Commonwealth (1929). Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs (1938) was published under the editorship of his nephew, Henry Borden.