Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, leader of Canada's all-conquering Progressive Conservative Party, flew off to Bermuda last week in a happy haze of fatigue and felicitations, more than ready to soak up a few days of sunlight before tackling his country's lowering problems of recession and unemployment. Behind him was the most dramatic election landslide in Canada's history, a coast-to-coast sweep that carried Tory M.P.s into 208 of the House of Commons' 265 seats, and cut the combined opposition down to a hapless 57.
It was partly the result of an inexorable trend that first revealed itself in the indecisive 1957 election,...