Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1995
Abstract
The task of rehabilitating the reputation of former Canadian Prime Minister R. B. Bennett is a formidable one. Nevertheless, that is P. B. Waite's goal in The Loner, a set of three "sketches" of Bennett's life. Originally given as the Joanne Goodman Lectures at the University of Western Ontario in 1991, these sketches encompass Bennett's earliest years at Hopewell Cape and the Miramichi, his years as a lawyer and rising politician in Calgary, and his years in Ottawa. The Loner is not, however, another biography of R. B. Bennett, according to Waite, but an attempt to explain "the personal side of R. B.'s life, his character, his ideas, and, where I can, what went into the making of both .... I have taken R. B. himself as centre, and left the rest for the time being." Given the dearth of papers that Bennett left, such a task is, at best, extremely difficult.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 15:2 (Spring 1995). Copyright © 1995 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.