Diet on the Ropes

Flinty old John Diefenbaker, 71, likes to parry any suggestion that he should step down as leader of Canada's Progressive Conservative Party with a Churchillian thrust: "I'm not going till the pub closes." Last week, as the party gathered in Ottawa's Chateau Laurier for its regular convention, Tory dissidents were trying their best to close the pub.

The oust-Diefenbaker movement centered around Dalton Camp, 46, the party's national chairman. An articulate Toronto advertising man, Camp blames the party's two straight losses in national elections on Diefenbaker's failure to appeal to the urban areas, to the Catholic French of Quebec, and to Canada's youth. For the past two months, Camp has been openly demanding that the party call a "leadership" convention to oust the old prairie lawyer.

Fighting back, Diefenbaker and his forces decided to quash the rebellion by voting Camp out of office at this year's party conference. The Diefenbaker candidate for Camp's job was Toronto Lawyer Arthur Maloney, 46. But Diefenbaker's fiery oratory, which once had propelled the party to the greatest election margin in Canadian history, this time failed to rally the delegates to his cause. As the Toronto Globe and Mail put it, "The audience didn't just sit on their hands; they checked them at the door."

At the showdown, Camp comfortably retained his position with 564 votes v. 502 for Diefenbaker's man. Next day, the delegates were even more explicit about how they felt about Diefenbaker. By a 2-to-l margin, they endorsed Camp's proposal for a conference some time before 1968 to reconsider the party's leadership. The timing for the conference was meant to avoid an embarrassing power struggle during Canada's centennial celebrations next year. Diefenbaker was so outraged by the vote that he refused to make his scheduled speech at the conference's closing dinner. As a result, the dinner itself was canceled, leaving the Chateau Laurier with 65 roasted turkeys and no one to eat them.

Was this the end of the Diet? No one was prepared to count him out. For one thing, the divided Tories had no one better--including Camp--to thrust onto the hustings if a new election were suddenly called. Aware of this, Diefenbaker was hardly inclined to quit. "Fight on, my men," he urged his supporters, recalling a medieval English ballad. "I am wounded, but I am not slain. I'll lay me down and rest a while, and then I'll rise and fight again."

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