The First Circus

This year, for the first time in their history, Canadians will enjoy a show something like the political performance that the U.S. puts on every four years. Last week Canada woke to some unexpected facts: that all three major Canadian parties will soon hold national conventions, that the two big parties will choose new leaders, and that some months hence they will fight it out in a national election. Nothing like it has happened before in Canada.

Canada's Liberals held their first national nominating convention in 1919—before that, party leaders were picked in parliamentary caucus—and the leader they picked then has led them ever since. With the retirement of William Lyon Mackenzie King, they will meet next week to pick another leader.

Canada's Conservatives—who staged their first national political convention in 1927—last week got news that they will hold their fourth national convention soon. The sudden resignation of their leader John Bracken had caught them by surprise, and they were in a tearing hurry to select a new leader before the government called a general election.

And Canada's CCF socialists, although they still had their leader, Schoolmasterish Major J. Coldwell, had already called a national convention Aug. 19 to furbish up a new platform. This will be their tenth convention.

With their less flamboyant, more businesslike way of politicking, Canadians would not have and did not want quite the kind of show the U.S. is staging this year. Yet they were going to have their own kind of circus, and in three rings, too (see below).