King's Secret

When the London Psychic News revealed last year that the late Mackenzie King had been a practicing spiritualist for 25 years (TIME, Oct. 23, 1950), most Canadians put it down as one more quirk in the enigmatic private life of their veteran Prime Minister. But Blair Fraser, an editor of Maclean's magazine, wanted to know more about King's well-kept secret. This year he went to Britain, where King's spiritualist activities centered, to dig for information. Last week Fraser's findings were published in Maclean's.

In England and Scotland, Fraser interviewed four leading spiritualists who had attended seances with the Prime Minister. From them, Fraser learned that Bachelor King had not confined his spirit contacts to his adored mother, whose constantly lighted portrait dominated King's Ottawa study and first awakened his interest in spiritualism. According to the spiritualists, King often attended two seances a week when he was in Britain, and communicated with other dead relatives, with his predecessor, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, with the late President Franklin Roosevelt, and even with Pat, his departed Irish terrier.

King's first "contact" with Roosevelt came during a seance with Geraldine Cummins, a British medium who scribbles spirit messages in automatic writing. King asked Roosevelt whether he should retire, and got back a terse answer. "Don't retire, stay on the job," the Roosevelt message read. "Your country needs you." Some time after King had returned to Canada, Miss Cummins said, she got a further communication from Roosevelt; the President had changed his mind and thought King should retire at once. Miss Cummins sent the word along to Ottawa.

The Roosevelt spirit was more self-assured when King attended another Cummins seance in 1948. "The President told Mr. King to watch Asia--that's where the danger lay," Miss Cummins told Fraser. "The Berlin airlift which was a focus of attention then was a side issue, a Soviet bluff. There was no mention of Korea by name, but F.D.R. did say he thought there'd be war in the Far East within two years."

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