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The handsome young lawyer attended the Baptist Church, served on the town council. Oldtimers recall that he was "skinny enough to spit through," but with his racy Maxwell touring car, he added notably to the gaiety of the local young set. Among his feminine companions was Olive Evangeline Freeman, Nova Scotia-born daughter of a Saskatoon Baptist minister. But three years after he set up shop in Wakaw, Diefenbaker was ready to move on to what seemed from Wakaw to be the big time: Prince Albert (1923 pop. 12,000).
15-Year Loser. There Diefenbaker got into politics, began a 15-year record of steady losing. A Liberal by family tradition but an oppositionist by temperament, he switched to the Conservative Party, the perennial underdog in Saskatchewan. The move made him eligible to accept a Tory nomination for Prince Albert's seat in the House of Commons. He lost. The same year, in a new general election, John Diefenbaker challenged Prime Minister Mackenzie King himself—and lost to the Prime Minister by a 4,000-vote margin.
In 1929 Lawyer Diefenbaker married Edna Brower, a lively woman who managed to distract Diefenbaker occasionally from his dedication to politics. Under her coaching he learned to play bridge, began to turn up at dances. Three more times Diefenbaker tried for office and each time lost. He was beaten for mayor of Prince Albert, twice for seats in the Saskatchewan legislature. But he won a record for ambition and persistence, and as the 1940 election approached, Conservatives in nearby Lake Center passed over six aspirants from their own constituency to nominate Diefenbaker for Parliament.
The invitation reached Diefenbaker in a Humboldt, Sask. courtroom, where he was defending a construction foreman charged with paying arsonists to burn down grain elevators so he could get the reconstruction jobs. Diefenbaker hastily turned the case over to one of his law partners, rushed off to confer with his nominators, wound up agreeing to run. The defendant got a ten-year sentence.
Diefenbaker deliberately blurred party lines, ardently wooed Liberals and Socialists. He squeaked through by 280 votes; across the nation, his party elected only 38 other M.P.s.
Industrial Buildup. At first, as a member of that tiny Tory band in Ottawa, John Diefenbaker was chiefly a spectator. Prime Minister Mackenzie King had taken the country to war at Britain's side. Clarence Decatur Howe, Canada's U.S.-born Minister of Munitions and Supply, ordered a massive tooling up, to start a great flow of aircraft, small arms and ammunition and vehicles to Europe—a tooling up that was virtually the birth of big Canadian industry. The war decisions were made in the Cabinet and speedily ratified in Parliament by the Liberal government's top-heavy majority. John Diefenbaker ran errands for his constituents and cultivated Parliament Hill newsmen, who found him approachable, patient, quotable.