Storm of Spears

Hard times have fallen on Canada's Prime Minister John Diefenbaker and his Conservative Party since last June's election. Though the Canadian economy has staged a remarkable comeback, Diefenbaker and his minority government have remained unpopular. With growing talk of a spring election, the latest Canadian Gallup poll shows Lester Pearson's Liberals with a commanding 47% of those polled, up 10% since June, while Diefenbaker's Conservatives are down to 32%, a new low. The Prime Minister's personal popularity has fallen to the point where 45% had a lower opinion of him than in June; only 12% thought he was doing a better job.

Last week came another blow. Montreal's influential French-language Le Devoir picked up a whisper that has been going around for years, reported that Diefenbaker's occasional uncontrollable trembling of the hands could be the result of having Parkinson's disease. At the party's annual convention in Ottawa, Diefenbaker scoffed at the story: "For one who has been described in such touching and dulcet tones by the Liberal Party as being in a state of decrepitude, I want to remind them that we outran them three times, and we'll outrun them again." Conservatives called the whole thing a vicious Liberal campaign of "malice and malignity" to make the 67-year-old Diefenbaker "the target for a storm of poisoned spears." Some of Diefenbaker's Cabinet ministers flatly denied that the boss suffers from Parkinson's; so did Diefenbaker's physician, Dr. Philip B. Rynard, a Tory M.P.: "He does not have Parkinson's disease. That's a lot of nonsense, and it's cruel."

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