Lester Bowles Pearson (23 April 1897 – 27 December 1972) was a Canadian politician, diplomat, and scholar who served as the 14th prime minister of Canada from 1963 to 1968. He also served as leader of the Liberal Party from 1958 to 1968 and as leader of the Official Opposition from 1958 to 1963.
Born in Newtonbrook, Ontario (now part of Toronto), Pearson pursued a career in the Department of External Affairs and went on to serve as the Canadian ambassador to the United States from 1944 to 1946. He entered politics in 1948 as Secretary of State for External Affairs, serving in that position until 1957 under William Lyon Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. Pearson was the seventh president of the United Nations General Assembly from 1952 to 1953. In 1953, he was a candidate to become the secretary-general of the United Nations, but was vetoed by the Soviet Union. In 1957, Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for proposing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Crisis, for which he received worldwide attention. After the Liberal Party was defeated in the 1957 federal election, Pearson won the leadership of the party the following year. He suffered two consecutive defeats by prime minister John Diefenbaker of the Progressive Conservative Party in the 1958 and 1962 federal elections. He challenged Diefenbaker for a third time in the 1963 federal election, and won a minority government. Pearson led the Liberals to a second minority government in 1965.
During Pearson's tenure as prime minister, he introduced progressive policies including the Canada Student Loan Program, the Canada Pension Plan, the Canada Assistance Plan, the Canada Labour Code, and universal health care. He established royal commissions on bilingualism and biculturalism and the status of women, oversaw the creation of the Maple Leaf flag after the Great Canadian flag debate, and unified the Canadian Armed Forces. In 1967, Pearson presided over the Canadian Centennial celebrations. In foreign policy, Pearson's government signed the Auto Pact with the United States and kept Canada out of the Vietnam War. Under his leadership, Canada became the first country in the world to implement a points-based immigration system. After five years in power, Pearson resigned as prime minister and retired from politics.
With his government programs and policies, together with his groundbreaking work at the United Nations and in international diplomacy, which included his role in ending the Suez Crisis, Pearson is considered to be among the most influential Canadians of the 20th century. He is ranked as one of Canada's greatest prime ministers.
Early life, family, and education
Pearson was born in Newtonbrook (now a part of Toronto) in the township of York, Ontario, the son of Annie Sarah (née Bowles) and Edwin Arthur Pearson, a Methodist (later United Church of Canada) minister. Lester was the brother of Vaughan Whitier Pearson and Marmaduke "Duke" Pearson. Edwin Arthur was the son of Irish immigrant Marmaduke Louis Pearson and United Empire Loyalist descendant Hester Ann Marsh, while both of his maternal grandparents were children of Irish immigrants. When Pearson was one month old, his family moved to 1984 Yonge Street. Lester Pearson's father moved the young family north of Toronto to Aurora, Ontario, where he was the minister at Aurora Methodist Church on Yonge Street. Lester spent his early years in Aurora and attended the public school on Church Street. The family lived at 39 Catherine Avenue. Pearson was a member of the Aurora Rugby team.
Pearson graduated from Hamilton Collegiate Institute in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1913 at the age of 16. Later that same year, he entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto, where he lived in residence in Gate House and shared a room with his brother Duke. He was later elected to the Pi Gamma Mu social sciences honour society's chapter at the University of Toronto for his outstanding scholastic performance in history and psychology. Just as Norman Jewison, E. J. Pratt, Northrop Frye and his student Margaret Atwood would, Pearson participated in the sophomore theatrical tradition of The Bob Comedy Revue. After Victoria College, Pearson won a scholarship to study at St John's College, Oxford, from 1921 to 1923.
At the University of Toronto, Pearson became a noted athlete, excelling in rugby union and also playing basketball. He later also played for the Oxford University Ice Hockey Club while on a scholarship at the University of Oxford, a team that won the first Spengler Cup in 1923. Pearson also excelled in baseball and lacrosse as a youth. His baseball talents as an infielder were strong enough for a summer of semi-pro play with the Guelph Maple Leafs of the Ontario Intercounty Baseball League. Pearson toured North America with a combined Oxford and Cambridge Universities lacrosse team in 1923. After he joined the University of Toronto's History Department as an instructor, he helped to coach the U of T's football and ice hockey teams. He played golf and tennis to high standards as an adult.
During World War I, Pearson volunteered for service as a medical orderly with the University of Toronto hospital unit. In 1915, he entered overseas service with the Canadian Army Medical Corps as a stretcher-bearer with the rank of private, and was subsequently promoted to corporal. During this period of service, he spent nearly two years in southern Europe, being shipped to Egypt and thereafter served on the Salonika front. He also served alongside the Serbian Army as a medical orderly. On 2 August 1917, Pearson was commissioned a temporary lieutenant. The Royal Canadian Air Force did not exist at that time, so Pearson transferred to Britain's Royal Flying Corps, where he served as a flying officer. As a pilot, he received the nickname of "Mike", given to him by a flight instructor who felt that "Lester" was too mild a name for an airman: "That’s a sissy’s name. You’re Mike," the instructor said. Thereafter, Pearson would use the name "Lester" on official documents and in public life, but was always addressed as Mike by friends and family.
Pearson learned to fly at an air training school in Hendon, England. He survived an airplane crash during his first flight. In 1918, Pearson was hit by a bus in London during a citywide blackout and was sent home to recuperate, being demobilised on 11 April 1919.
After the war, he returned to school, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree (BA) from the University of Toronto in 1919. He was able to complete his degree after one more term, under a ruling in force at the time, since he had served in the military during the war. He and his brother Duke then spent a year working in Hamilton, Ontario, and in Chicago, in the meat-packing industry at Armour and Company (whose president at the time, Frank Edson White, was his uncle through marriage to Lillian Sophia Pearson White), which he did not enjoy.
Upon receiving a scholarship from the Massey Foundation, he studied for two years at St John's College at the University of Oxford, where he received a BA degree with second-class honours in modern history in 1923, and the M.A. in 1925. After Oxford, he returned to Canada and taught history at the University of Toronto.
In 1925, he married Maryon Moody, from Winnipeg, who had been one of his students at the University of Toronto. Together, they had one son, Geoffrey, and one daughter, Patricia. Maryon was confident and outspoken, supporting her husband in all his political endeavours.
In 1927, after scoring top marks on the Canadian foreign service entry exam, he then embarked on a career in the Department of External Affairs. Prime minister R. B. Bennett was a noted talent spotter. He took note of, and encouraged, the young Pearson in the early 1930s, and appointed Pearson to significant roles on two major government inquiries: the 1931 Royal Commission on Grain Futures, and the 1934 Royal Commission on Price Spreads. Bennett saw that Pearson was recognized with an OBE after he shone in that work, arranged a bonus of CA$1,800, and invited him to a London conference. Pearson was assigned to the High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom in 1935.