By Gregory Clark, October 4, 1924.
Pranks, Politics and Scraps Made Up Boyhood of Ontario’s First Son – Whenever He Can He Goes Home to His Folks at Morrisburg – Aims at Restoring Responsibility in Province’s Schools – Forswore Big Salary and Life of Ease Because He Is a Fighter
G. Howard Ferguson1 sat in the wood shed.
His father and mother sat in earnest talk in the office of the big stone house.
“He is going from bad to worse,” said Mrs., Ferguson. “You are away at the sessions of parliament a great deal, and you don’t know what is going on.”
“Hmph!” said Dr. Ferguson. “Don’t I!”
“This time,” continued Mrs. Ferguson, “the principal of the high school says he does not see he is going to take Howard back. It was serious offense against the discipline of the school. He put gunpowder into the stove, which blew off the lid and a kettle for distilling moisture into the class room air…”
Dr. Ferguson, M.P., stood up.
“There is one thing we mustn’t forget. It takes brains to think up mischief. It takes spirit to carry it through. I prefer a young rascal to a mollycoddle. If we can only control him until the serious affairs of life begin to interest him, I am certain Howard will be a success, for he is filled with vigor and ardor. Why, he may some day be premier!”
And with a chuckle the doctor walked out wards the wood shed. For his sly reference to Howard and the premiership would settle Mrs. Ferguson. She was born of a political family, and here she was the wife of a politician, and doing her best to raise a family of politicians.
G. Howard Ferguson continued to sit in the wood shed, his chin sunk in his hands, gloomily pondering the mysteries of existence, until his grave parent entered, and read him a stern and final ultimatum with respect to his future conduct.
All this was forty years ago. It would have by now been forgotten if a little girl, devoted worshiper of the wicked Howard, had not lain cuddled in her crib in the next room, listening intently to the ominous conversation of her parents.
What Does Kemptville Say?
I went down to Kemptville, near Ottawa, to try and obtain a “line” on the premier of Ontario. In The Star library, where files are put on all public men, there is a fat file labeled Furguson. But in those papers and photographs there is not one picture of the premier except in the political aspect, and not one printed line but is political.
Since his announcement of the temperance plebiscite the whole province is sharply curious as to the human aspect of the Hon. G. Howard Ferguson. Politics reveals most men. Politics has clothed the premier in a voluminous garment. What is he like, with the toga off? What’s his sport, his hobby, his life?
Kemptville holds the answer, entire.
Because Kemptville knows so much about Premier Ferguson, the rest of Ontario knows little.
By a boiling process, I could reduce my adventures down to a few paragraphs in estimate of the man.
But we won’t boil. Come on with me.
I landed into Kemptville before seven o’clock of a bright and frosty morning. A gentleman in whiskers, representing a large implement firm, was the only other passenger besides myself to be deposited at Allen’s Hotel.
A boy of fourteen was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a neighboring store.
“Where does the premier live?” I asked him.
“Just up the street there. But he ain’t here now. He’s in Toronto.”
“I just came up to get some information about him.”
“Oh? Well, you came to the right place.”
“What sort of a man is he?” I asked.
The boy studied me curiously.
“Say, he’s the best… Say, do you know, he gives orders to the schools to issue out ice cream tickets to us, every fair time, and this year I got three. Howard’s the best man in the world. He never walked past me in his life. You ask anybody.”
A sound within the store set the boy vigorously sweeping again. So I went into the hotel. Mr. Allen greeted me. I told him my business.
“Anybody,” said Mr. Allen, “can tell you something about Howard. But you must be sure to see Mrs. Dr. Storey – that’s his sister – and you must pay a visit to the ‘board of trade.'”
He smiled and showed me through the window a little grey shop across the road from the hotel.
Sitting There for 25 Years
“That’s Bill Hyland’s shoe repairing shop. But it is better known hereabouts as the ‘board of trade.’ That’s where the boys sit. You will find some of them there at any hour of the day. When Howard is home, he sits in there, too. They know Howard. He’s been sitting in there for twenty-five years.”
Already I began to have an inkling of the situation – and an inkling of the Hon. G. Howard Ferguson. So, to see how far this thing was going to go, I resolved to ask everybody about the premier. I got Alf. Little to drive me around in his ancient Ford. Alf. is older than the premier, but went to school with him.
“What kind of a man is he? What was he like when he was a kid?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you,” said Alf. “He was only so high. But he could lick you to a standstill. Next minute, he would lick anybody that touched you. As far as I can remember, he didn’t do anything but fight. But he was the most popular kid in the town. He’s never changed. Still fighting, all the time, still licking bullies, still befriending everybody, still the most popular kid in town.”
When the sun came up and shone fair down into the main street of Kemptville, there began to be signs of life. Merchants opened up their doors and let down the awnings. Boys swept off the pavement. And then appeared a few elderly gentlemen who marched leisurely, from different directions, halting for brief chats with all who were out, but converging definitely upon Bill Hyland’s cobbler shop.
So I went in, too. Bill Hyland is one of those lean, gentle, genial men who beam behind spectacles. His shop is the typical cobbler’s shop, littered with old boots and leather, the walls covered with cards and papers, the air reeking with the pungent, friendly smell of leather. Grouped about the little den, on chairs without backs, sat three members of the board of trade.
“The premier comes in here, when he’s in, town?” I asked.
“When he’s home,” corrected Bill Hyland. “He sits right there, on that box by the window, with his legs crossed, smoking and leaning his head back.”
“What does he talk about?”
“Whatever there is to talk about. He’s been sitting there for years. I don’t know how many. He’s one of the bunch. The only difference his being premier has made is to keep him away from home.”
“He’s closed his law office,” I said.
“Yes, but not his home. His farm is still going strong. He comes home whenever he can, and sets to work on his farm and comes in here to talk with the boys, the same as ever.”
“I guess he is pretty popular in Kemptville.”
“Why shouldn’t he be? He’s lived here all his life. We’ve known him since he was a kid. He’s a friend to everybody. And he has made good. And he still lives in Kemptville.”
He is a Small-Town Man
In this quiet town, Howard Ferguson was born and raised. Back to it he came, after seven years’ exposure to the charms of the big city during his university and law courses. From it he came to Toronto as member of the legislature and cabinet minister and premier. But back to it he still comes whenever the increasing responsibilities of Toronto permit.
And here we have the reason he is not known, as other public men come to be known, to the big city. Because he is a small-town man. Unlike Whitney and Hearst2, he has not transferred his interests and his home to Toronto when big politics called. It is a character hunt we are on, and hero we have the first clue: when he can, he goes home to his folks.
The board of trade was a little bit stand-offish with me, for there is dynamite in politics, and who knew but that I might be an enemy within the lines?
“They tell me Howard was a live wire, as a young fellow,” I suggested to the meeting, by way of setting loose the anecdotes. The boys exchanged smiling glances.
“You see Mrs. Dr. Storey,” said Bill Hyland, tapping at his last. “She will have it right.”
So at last I came to the big stone house where, the premier’s sister lives. She was the same little girl who lay curled in her crib listening to the fateful words of her parents the night G. Howard Ferguson sat alone in the wood shed.
“The premier’s success in politics,” I said to her, “comes, as such things come, from character and not from chance. Are we right in regarding him as a fighter, a man of high spirit and energy, to whom politics is second nature, whose hobby is politics, whose fun is politics, whose life is politics?”
Raised in Political Atmosphere
“It would have been a great wonder,” replied Mrs. Storey, “if Howard had not gone into politics and made a success of politics. For he was born and raised in an atmosphere thick with politics.
“When he was three years old, his father, Dr. Ferguson, entered the Federal house for the first time, and remained a member of parliament for twenty-five years. So, for the formative years of his life, Howard lived in the thick of it, when politics was a greater game than it is to-day.
“This house had three spare bedrooms, always kept in readiness for the political guest. There were guests to dinner nearly every night, and politics was the talk at table.
“Howard’s mother was even more interested in politics than his father, for it may fairly be said that she did a great deal to organize and plan the doctor’s campaigns, and she had much to do with the success of his career.
“So you may see Howard should be pretty well grounded in the current history of politics. What a boy listens to at the table, every day of his life, is likely to influence him.
“Then, the practical side of politics, the manual labor of the game, has been familiar to him from childhood. By the time he was ten years of age, he was out driving through the country distributing campaign literature, posting up notices, and accompanying his father on canvassing trips, learning the art of political discussion and of soliciting a vote. These things were not chores to him. They were manly stuff, and he took the most ardent interest in the whole game. I recall him coming home to dinner with the latest political gossip he had picked up sitting around the stores with the men of the town. And I remember his goings and comings on winter nights near election time, when he was driving through the country in a cutter, going messages for his father, delivering literature or arranging the practical details of meetings.
“Of course, character was being formed during these adventures, but the practical lessons in politics which he learned in boyhood seem to have been invaluable to him, and to have had some influence in directing his steps.”
Was Forever into Mischief
I turned Mrs. Storey’s memory towards his character as a boy. Was he a fighter?
She laughed.
“I regret to say, he was forever into mischief. He was so eager a disposition, so full of energy and vitality. I imagine he could not be content with the ordinary outlets offered to boys. It must be confessed that he was frequently suspended and expelled from school, because of his mischief. Fred Napp, of roller boat fame3, wore two gold teeth in front, as the result of a shinny argument with Howard. I remember him coming home with black eyes, and other wounds, which only endeared him to me the more.
“He used to go with other boys back to the gipsy camp and play cards with the gipsies. When he was attending high school, one of his favorite games was to attend auction sales in the town and when any well-known town, skinflint began to bid for something. Howard would bid too, running bids up to much more than the other had hoped to pay, and when Howard felt he had gone as far as was safe, he would drop out.
“Only one time, if I remember, did he get caught. He bid against a certain character in town for a lot of old railroad lamps, an old gun and a broken carpet sweeper. And the other dropped out, leaving Howard the winner of the contest at $8.35. This was one of the two times that Howard got a switching from his father. For father had to pay the money for the junk.
“It was after the escapade of the powder in the stove at school that his father sent Howard down to the shanties for a week to work at hauling out railway ties.
“He was not a success at school, because of his mischief. He had his ups and his downs. But his father was not alarmed, for he said that if this energy, and invention could be turned to the serious affairs of life in due time, the boy would be a success. And that has proved true.”
The Fights in Harding’s Mill
Not Mrs. Storey, but Jim Hagen and a couple of the other old schoolmates of the premier told of the fights in Harding’s flour mill. Old man Harding would put up coppers for the boys to fight for. On the big bare mill floor the boys would gather after school and, paired off, would fight till “nuff” was called, the winner taking the one cent stakes.
Howard was the top boy in his class in this fighting. Jim Hagen remembers him fighting ten fights in succession, and taking boys a good deal bigger than himself in order to compete in the copper stakes.
“He became a mighty skilful scrapper,” said Jim Hagen, “but mind you, it was only for sport.”
Howard got into trouble once, though. The system of initiation into the high school war known as “blocking.” It is nowadays known as the “royal bumps.” The novices are taken by head and feet and bumped against a brick wall.
Howard was one of the four lads who undertook to give the bumps to a big lad named Brown. It was a rule that each new boy had to step up himself and take the bumps, for if he backed down, heaven help him. Brown had to be seized by force to take his initiation. And in giving him the bumps, he was injured. The father had the case up before the magistrate. and Howard was fined $8.
“He announced, at that time,” said one of the chums who also was fined, “that he was going to enter the profession of law. And he did.”
G. Howard Ferguson sat in a little bedroom in the house at 191 McCaul street, Toronto. On the floor lay his carpet bag, unopened.
Here he was, in the midst of the great city the world before him. The principal of the school had finally and irrevocably decided that he could no longer countenance Howard’s mischief and infraction of the discipline of the school.
And here was Howard, not a matriculant, sent up to Toronto by his father, to try to matriculate in the university at the Toronto examinations.
He was lonely and alone. He had reported at the Y. M. C. A. and at the registrar’s office. Not a soul had spoken to him. He had registered. And there on the floor of this strange room, so far from merry Kemptville, lay his carpet bag unopened.
Would He Head for the West?
Would he stick it? Or would he grab his bag and disappear – go out west where all the youth and adventure of that day were heading?
At that moment, there came a rap on the door, and a big fellow by the name of Jack Ferguson walked in.
He was a third year student at the university.
“I happened to notice your name on the roll,” said the stranger, “and my name being Ferguson, I thought we Fergusons should stand together.”
The older fellow took young Howard in tow, introduced him into the life of the university, got him into the football club, and Howard gave up all dreams of going west, and sailed into his matriculation with his usual vigor.
He settled down to seven years of college in Toronto, to his degree in law.
Character: a distinctly independent nature, with the ingenuity to devise mischief and the spirit to see it through, even to the extent of being, finally, sent up alone to face matriculation in the big strange city. He was no compromiser.
The comic coincidence of the thing is that the very day I was learning all these mischievous exploits of the boy the man was giving to the press of the province the details of the great educational reform which he, as minister of education, as well as prime minister, has devised.
When I got home from Kemptville, I got an appointment with the premier and told him I had been down to the old town and had dug up some great tales of his boyhood.
“Go ahead,” said he. “Our sins will find us out.”
“But,” said I, “isn’t it odd that these things should be told just at the moment you announce your educational reforms?”
“I have in mind,” said the premier, “some of the things that happened to me as a boy, when I make the changes I have suggested. Responsibility is the thing! It was want of responsibility that made me a mischief. So I advised responsibility of my own.
“Don’t imagine for a minute that my schoolmasters did not leave impressions on me that have lasted all my life. A man to whom I owe as much as to anybody in the world was a schoolmaster whom I met after I had left school, but who taught me this philosophy: Never worry and never lose your temper.
“But responsibility is a good philosophy, of which we have almost lost sight of in recent times, so religiously have we sought, with infinite organization and regulation, to take all responsibility off teachers and children and mankind as a whole. My desire, in the reforms I have outlined, is to restore responsibility to teachers and children. I want to bring back the old personal contact between teacher and pupil which you will find amongst the best memories of the older men. The legendary schoolmaster who left the imprint of his character on his pupils.
“I have cut the book of official regulations which bind and tie the teachers and pupils of this province from two and a half inches thick to one inch. I hope to do more. Set them free. A boy isn’t a pail in which to pour facts. He is a material to inspire with life, to galvanize into glorious life. If you hold him, he will wriggle — Thank heaven!
“Go ahead with your stories if you want to. They will be no different to the stories that could be told of every schoolboy in the country.”
Tied Knots in the Bell Rope
Aye. Howard, of the time you tied the knots in the bell rope so that the lame teacher couldn’t reach it (and went and visited and ministered unto him when he was ill,) and of upsetting the bell so that it wouldn’t ring (and only one boy bold enough to climb the roof and set it right,) of unscrewing all the seats and desks from the floor the day the inspector called, and the vast hullaballoo and confusion when the pupils came in and sat down with a crashing and smashing under the grave inspector’s outraged eye, (and you suspended, no questions asked, but just the teacher saying weakly: “Howard! Leave the room!”) and so on and so on.
When he came back from College, and set up his shingle as a barrister and solicitor, his well remembered talent for raising heck did not work against him, for he at once obtained a good practice in the law which involves the interests of a small town: suits, mortgages, property law. What energy he had to spare from the establishing of a law practise he put into the town council, being a town councillor, reeve and a member of the school board. (His mind turns to education.) Then in 1902 he went up before the Conservative convention for nomination to the provincial house, but failed to get in. In 1905 he again went before the convention and went in when the Whitney government came to power.
This, of course, brought him into his stride. When he was invited into the cabinet he wired his mother, who was already on her death bed, of the realization of her dreams, this gifted lady who had been into politics all her days, and it was a great triumph for her.
Stuck to Home Folks
But he never abandoned the home folks. When he came into Bill Hyland’s place, as a cabinet minister, he took the same seat as ever, and they still called him Howard.
When he went back as prime minister, it was the same.
Kemptville has a beautiful big agricultural college and experimental farm now (since Howard’s accession to the cabinet) and a fine armories, (of, recent date). Why not? The big house he lives in he has had twenty years, with the farm. He was a success before he was a political success.
His farm makes him money. It has an orchard of five hundred trees, and he fattens hogs and steers. and grows corn and vegetables. He could live off his farm. Last season, he got the best price in the township for his hogs.
In 1920, when the Hearst government went down to defeat. Hon. Howard Ferguson announced to his colleagues and friends that he was through with politics. It was generally known that a very big industrial corporation were after him, and had offered him a salary of some thirty thousand dollars to look after their foreign interests.
It was a beautiful prospect, to spend his richest years – he was now fifty – with money and travel all over the world, with his wife for he has no children. It was the sort of goal a man dreams of. An end to all the responsibilities and burdens for polities is a master that lets a man not many paces from the door. An end to struggle and care – just to travel and deal in big, accustomed matters, from Norway to Japan, Paris, London, the world!
Howard Ferguson, the small-town man, had never traveled. Here, in 1920, before the vigorous, active man was a dream vista, ahead, down the years.
He Simply Couldn’t Quit
He was through. He told his colleagues, his constituents, his friends. His colleagues pleaded. His party begged. Big Tories came down from Ottawa to argue with him, to beg him. But he was going.
Then came the timber enquiry.
“You can’t go now!” his colleagues cried. “It would look as though you were running away.”
“Let them talk. It won’t hurt me. I have nothing to hide.”
“But It will damage the party if you quit,” they argued. “Even if you feel no hurt, it will hurt the party. Fight, Howard, fight!”
As the twig is bent…
He had his plans made. His affairs were more than half put in shape. He had accepted the big corporation’s offer. His wife and he had planned trips, voyages. They had spent nights and nights planning, reveling, scheming.
And then character began to function.
The fights in Harding’s mill, for Old Man Harding’s coppers, the politics around the table, the Party, the trips in the winter night stacking up dodgers on country cross-roads, the meetings, the argument, Bill Hyland’s “board of trade,” the home folks, fight, fight.
So the Isles of Greece where burning Sappho love and sung. Also, the capitals of Europe, calling, calling, ease, wealth, independence, an end to fighting, fighting-Howard stayed.
He walked the floor all one night. His wife had said: “We will stay!”
The next morning he came out with his famous, “nail-their-hides-to-the-fence.”
And he is premier.
When he announced to a contentious province the holding of a temperance vote, the province asks, sharply curious: “What manner of man is he, himself, apart from politics? What is his life? What does he play?”
Well, there you are!
Editor’s Notes:
- Howard Ferguson was the 9th Premier of Ontario from 1923-1930. ↩︎
- James Whitney was the 6th Premier of Ontario from 1905-1914. William Howard Hearst was the 7th Premier of Ontario from 1914-1919. ↩︎
- The Knapp Roller Boat was a weird attempt to increase speed and reduce sea sickness. ↩︎
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