The Prime Ministers

The Prime Ministers: Canada’s Leaders and the Nation They Shaped
J.D.M. Stewart (Sutherland House, $37.95, 361 pages)

The last books on Canada’s prime ministers were published in the 1990s and while it is difficult to match Right Honourable Men by Michael Bliss, former high school teacher, J.D.M. Stewart has proven worthy of the task. History that focuses on politics or great men is even less out of fashion in 2025 than it was three decades ago, so The Prime Ministers: Canada’s Leaders and the Nation They Shaped fills a gap in the presentation of Canadian history, and for a political history of the country Stewart’s work provides some new interpretations of older prime ministers and includes the full tenures of the four prime ministers that have taken office since Right Honourable Men was published in 1994. It includes a short chapter on Canada’s newest prime minister, Mark Carney.

Stewart provides short synopses of the 23 men and one woman who have led Canada’s governments for the past 158 years. Unfortunately, Abbott, Thompson, Bowell, and Tupper share three pages, while Clark and Turner share five pages, but each of the other prime ministers are provided a short biography and outline of their political and policy accomplishments, and their challenges and scandals. Stewart examines the nation-building programs and foreign relations, notably with the United Kingdom and the United States, to show how Canada gradually formed its unique identity. He writes about Alexander Mackenzie, called “the most underrated” prime minister by Dale C. Thompson, noting his “modest legacy” of creating the Supreme Court, Royal Military College, and the modern election system (to counter a system “fraught with corruption”). He writes about the interventionist years of R.B. Bennett, the Progressive Conservative who gave Canada the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission and the Bank of Canada; the former was possible only “after sorting out the classic Canadian question of whether broadcasting was a federal or provincial power.”

Stewart writes in his introduction that to know our prime ministers “is to know ourselves;” history shorn of our top political leaders, or worse, histories that seek only to villainize the past, do a great disservice to Canadians’ understanding of ourselves. Stewart does a great service in providing short synopses of the 23 men and one woman who have led Canada’s governments for the past 158 years.

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