The Social Side of the House.
Parliament has its social side, and I found in the years I was at Ottawa that friendships did not respect party lines there, as was commonly supposed. The case of David Mills and Sir John Macdonald, already mentioned, is on illustration. There we had a repetition of the story of David and “John-A-than.” Sir John loved to hear David hold forth on constitutional questions and would listen to him by the hour, although he once called him “a mass of undigested information.” Often the two would talk matters over sitting side by side in the House, and it was an open secret that the Honorable David might have had a portfolio in Sir John’s cabinet any time he desired.
One of the men who helped personal friendships in a very practical manner was Alonzo Wright, known to the House, if not to the country, as the “King of the Gatineau.” Alonzo was comfortably situated so far as this world’s goods are concerned. He was descended from the first owner of the site of the city of Hull, and he had married the granddaughter of the first owner of the site of the city of Ottawa. At his fine estate at Ironsides up the Gatineau River, he gathered every Saturday members of Parliament from both sides of the House. He was a veritable John Bull in personal appearance, and his hospitality was of the John Bull kind. Party bitterness gave way in the presence of the “King of the Gatineau,” and many a politician found that the member on the opposite side of whom at first he did not think much was not such a bad fellow after all.
The rumor was current that it was here that Sir Adolphe Caron and Sir William Mulock formed their interesting friendship. Sir Adolphe was Minister of Militia, and Sir William was the Opposition critic of the Militia Department. When the Militia vote was coming up in Supply, Minister and critic would sometimes dine together before settling down to the hard hitting. Sir John Macdonald, by the way, had a good opinion of Sir William, and is credited with having said that if he were only ten years younger he “would get Bill over to the Tory side.” This was about the time when Mr. Mulock was restive under the interpretation put upon the party policy of unrestricted reciprocity, and had moved his resolution affirming the loyalty of the people of Canada to the Throne. Sir John had his Saturday night dinners at which politicians of both sides figured. These he held up to the day before the fatal stroke which carried him off. It was at the last dinner he gave that he got off the Chinaman’s description of the electric street car, to the discomfiture of the ladies present. Everybody knows it—“got no horsee; got no steamee; goes like hellee.” It must not be supposed from this that Sir John indulged in extreme language. Far from it. If he made use of an expression that was slightly out of the ordinary, it was in a tone of humorous reluctance.
Within the precincts of the House the members were given to entertaining one another. D. W. Davis from Stand Off in the wild and wooly west, was especially valuable in this connection. When the Mounted Police in 1874 first arrived in the far west and expected to be met by a gang of desperadoes, they found D. W., a trusted official of the big firm of I. G. Baker & Co., behind the counter of the store in his shirt sleeves, unconcernedly smoking a cigar and when they made known their mission, pleasantly bid them search the place for liquor, which they unavailingly did—but it was there all the same. Coming from the west he knew the Indian down to the ground, and he used to delight the members at their sing-songs with imitations of the Indian dance interlarded with war-whoops that threatened to disturb the cogitations of the more sedate statesmen who were arguing or sleeping in the Commons chamber.
Sleeping! Well, they were not likely to be sleeping if William Paterson, of Brant, familiarly known as “Billy Paterson,” after the man who was struck by some unknown person, had the floor. Mr. Paterson was the possessor of the most thunderous voice in Parliament. It used to be said that he could be heard away down in the Rideau Club. One of Dr. Landerkin’s jokes at the expense of a new member was to arouse his interest in Mr. Paterson’s eloquence, and then advise him to occupy the seat immediately in front of Mr. Paterson, so that he could hear him well because he had such a poor voice. The newcomer usually fell for this, with the result that when Mr. Paterson was going under a full head of steam, the new arrival had to slink away in order to protect his ear drums. All the House watched the “freshie” as he selected his “good seat” in front of the orator, and loud was the laughter when, after a few vocal blasts from Billy Paterson, the astonished listener beat a hasty retreat.
“Billy” after being a Minister for some years decided to give a dinner to his Parliamentary friends of both Houses. The list was so lengthy that instead of one function there had to be two. By the “old-timers” they were acknowledged to have been the liveliest gatherings ever held in the old Parliamentary restaurant presided over by Sam Barnett. Mr. Paterson stipulated to “Jim” Sutherland, who was making the arrangements for him, that the dinner should be conducted on strictly temperance principles, but someone must have given Sam Barnett the wink. Scotch and rye were supplied in ginger ale bottles and within an hour there was more hilarity than one finds at ten ordinary banquets. Mr. Paterson was greatly pleased at the success of the function and remarked to Sir Richard Cartwright, who was sitting next to him at the first dinner: “Cartwright, I have always said you could get as much, or more, fun out of a temperance dinner than one where liquor is served; you have a demonstration of it to-night.” Sir Richard, who was wise to what was going on, smilingly acquiesced in the remark but refrained from enlightening his host. To the day of his death, Mr. Paterson never knew of the arrangements that Jim Sutherland and Bill Galliher had made to make the banquets a howling success.