Changing the Guard

After nine days of waiting, Lester B. Pearson at last got to wear his formal cutaway to pay the traditional call on Canada's Governor General. He emerged, grinning broadly, to say that he had been asked to form a Liberal government. Until the last minute, no one was quite sure whether Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who loves office so much, would go quietly or cling in defeat to the vestiges of power. Even as he prepared for his own call on the Governor General, he fended off reporters. Was his visit for the purpose of resigning? asked a newsman. "That assumption," snapped Diefenbaker, "is not well founded."

Dollies & Deals. Yet down he stepped, at 67, into the role of Opposition leader. "I believe I'll be the eighth Prime Minister to serve also as leader of the Opposition," he told reporters. "And two of those --MacDonald and Mackenzie King--returned again to become Prime Ministers." The bitter taste of defeat was everywhere.' Dollies piled with files shuttled back and forth, transferring Diefenbaker's papers from the three offices a Prime Minister commands in Ottawa to the single office accorded the Opposition leader. He also had to swap houses, and prepared to take his belongings from the 30-room mansion on Sussex Drive to Stornoway, the house maintained for the Opposition by a group of Canadian businessmen. Then there was the cut in pay--$37,000 a year for Mike Pearson now, $27,000 for Diefenbaker as Opposition leader.

For Pearson, it was a week of exhilara tion and new beginnings. A baby was named for him in Newfoundland--and so were two penguin chicks hatched in Vancouver's zoo. Technically, he was still four seats shy of an absolute parliamentary majority. But the two splinter parties, with 41 seats between them, had both promised support on most issues. A frantic argument shook the funny-money Social Credit Party over six Quebec M.P.s who bolted party lines, independently promised their votes to Pearson. "I will not tolerate any deals," said Social Credit Leader Robert Thompson, hinting darkly that the Liberals had been spreading some "rather handsome" money around. But after eleven hours of impassioned oratory at a party caucus in Ottawa, the defectors recanted. As soon as they did, Thompson grandly announced that all 24 of his Socreds would support the Liberals anyway, and urged Pearson to act as if he had a majority government.

Choosing with Care. Preparing for the formal changeover this week, Pearson picked his Cabinet with care, balancing off the oldtimers who had stayed with him in the lean years against the bright newcomers he himself had recruited. The key job of Secretary of State for External Affairs goes to Paul Martin, 59, who lost the Liberal leadership to Pearson in 1958, but loyally stayed on as a foreign relations expert; Pearson's Finance Minister will be Walter Gordon, 57, a Toronto management consultant and close friend, who spent the week working on the budget Pearson has promised for June.

Before anything else, Pearson wanted to get in visits with Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President Kennedy. The White House was already at work on an agenda: nuclear weapons; the Columbia River power impasse; Canada's prospective role in the Organization of American States, which Pearson believes his nation should join. Along with this, he was immersed in plans for his "60 days of decision." Asked when they would begin, Pearson shot back without hesitation: "When I take over."

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