The people were in a mood of leave-well-enough-alone. Hardly had the ballot-counting started in the Maritimes before it was evident that Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King would come out on top again. In politically potent Quebec, the Liberal Party's victory reached landslide proportions. Then Ontario, by not voting against the 70-year-old Prime Minister to the extent anticipated, made it a sure thing. Final returns, pouring in from the western provinces, simply decided the question of how really conclusive the victory would be.
It was by no means the resounding triumph that the canny, colorless Prime Minister had achieved in 1940,...