MacEachen, Allan J., 1921-2017 : Allan Joseph MacEachen was born in 1921 in Inverness, Nova Scotia, a small coal-mining community on Cape Breton Island's West Coast. His father, Angus, was a coal miner, his mother Annie MacEachen, a homemaker. Both parents spoke Gaelic at home. MacEachen was the youngest of three surviving sons, with older brothers John, who became a university professor in the United States, and William, who was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. According to an unpublished memoire, MacEachen suffered from an undiagnosed, but debilitating childhood illness, and was given a doctor's permission to attend St. Francis Xavier University (SFX) only after consultations with local doctors and experts in Halifax. MacEachen obtained a BA in 1944, in Economics and went on to complete an MA in Political Economy from the University of Toronto in 1946. Following the completion of his MA, MacEachen returned to SFX to teach Political Economy and continued his Post Graduate studies in economics and labour relations at the University of Chicago in 1948. MacEachen became the Head of the Department of Economics and Social Sciences at SFX in 1948, a post he held until 1951. He began a Ph.D. in 1951 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The period of time MacEachen spent at SFX was formative for him. While a student and a professor, MacEachen fell under the influence of the Reverend Moses Coady, the head of the SFX Extension Department and a prominent activist in the Antigonish Movement. The Antigonish Movement blended adult education with cooperation as a way for the Maritimes to advance socially and economically. MacEachen was involved with two programs, "Life in the Maritimes" and "The Peoples' School". The former included two weekly educational broadcasts on topics of interest to farmers and the latter featured broadcasts focussing on issues of interest to industrial workers in the Maritimes. MacEachen, as well, conducted classes in industrial communities, particularly in mining towns.
Based on his regular radio appearances, MacEachen first sought a seat in the House of Commons in 1949. He was 30 and ran as a newcomer for the Liberal Party nomination against an established candidate, Judge William Carroll. He was unsuccessful in this first attempt, but a renewed run in the 1953 general election, based on a better-organized, grass roots-based campaign resulted in MacEachen being elected to the House of Commons (Highlands-Canso) for the Liberal Party. He was re-elected in the general election of 1957, being the only Nova Scotia Liberal to hold his seat, but was defeated in 1958, losing by a margin of only 16 votes.
After losing his seat in the 1958 federal election that saw John Diefenbaker sweep the country, MacEachen declined an offer to return to teaching at SFX and instead joined Lester Pearson's Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition. There he worked as a special assistant providing the former and future Prime Minister with advice on economic matters, joining Maurice Lamontagne and Tom Kent in the office. MacEachen later claimed that the experience provided him with the opportunity to learn Parliament procedures, policy development, how to effectively work with colleagues and how the federal Liberal Party functioned (Unpublished Manuscript, Allan MacEachen, 2003, p. 115, and following).
MacEachen was re-elected in 1962, and won every subsequent election until he retired from the House of Commons in 1984, winning in 1963, 1965, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1979 and 1980. He was sworn into the Privy Council in April 1963, as the Minister of Labour in the Lester Pearson government, a portfolio he led from 1963 to 1965. He was Minister of National Health and Welfare from 1965 to 1967. The records in this fonds provides evidence of a significant change for Canada in socio-economic policy and institutional life. It was during his tenure of the health ministry that Medicare was legislated. As well, this period saw the adoption of the Canada Pension Plan and the Canada Assistance Plan, as well as changes to the Old Age Pension in the form of the Guaranteed Income Supplement. In all these programs, MacEachen played a significant role in defining Canada as a country with a publicly funded social safety net for the infirm and the aged. It seems likely, given his life experiences and education at St. Francis Xavier, and the records in this fonds attest to this, that he considered these achievements, along with the modernized Canada Labour Code, worthy contributions to Canadian life.
MacEachen ran unsuccessfully to become the Leader of the Liberal Party in 1968, following the retirement of Lester Pearson. MacEachen stated in a 1977 interview with Peter Stursberg that this failure was based on two developments. The first factor was the emergence of Pierre Trudeau as a candidate who appealed to the same demographic in the Liberal Party as MacEachen, and the second was the belated decision taken by Robert Winters, a very prominent Cabinet Minister from Nova Scotia to run in the 1968 leadership race. This siphoned off much of the support that MacEachen might have expected from the Atlantic caucus of the party. MacEachen was eliminated on the third ballot in the contest that resulted in Pierre Trudeau being selected as Leader of the Liberal Party. This defeat, which included both a loss of political face and a massive financial debt, was compounded by the deaths of both parents and his brother, William, and represented the low point of MacEachen's long political career.
MacEachen went on to hold prestigious Cabinet posts in successive Liberal Governments under Pierre Elliot Trudeau. He was Minister of Manpower and Immigration from 1968 to 1970. He was the President of the Privy Council on three occasions, on an acting basis in 1969, and from 1970 to 1974 and from 1976 to 1979. As President of the Privy Council, he transformed the Council into a power government department and cemented his reputation as a savvy political strategist and a master Parliamentarian. He was particularly effective during the two-year period after the 1972 federal election that returned a Trudeau minority government, setting the legislative agenda, managing the operation of the House and working with the leaders of the other political parties. He held the position of Secretary of State for External Affairs twice, from 1974 to 1976 and from 1982 to 1984. His first term as Foreign Affairs Minister featured a turn towards Canadian nationalism and a growing sense of independence vis-à-vis Canada's relationship with the United States. In the latter posting, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, he focussed on international economic development and on the work of the Law of the Sea conference. In between these two postings as the Secretary of State for External Affairs, MacEachen was the Minister of Finance, from 1980 to 1982. His 1981 budget was particularly controversial and much of the original budget had to be scaled back. At the same time, MacEachen often held complimentary positions for the Liberals while serving as a Cabinet Minister. He was Government House Leader from 1967 to 1968, including during times when the government was in a minority position and Deputy Prime Minister twice from 1977 to 1979 and from 1980 to 1982.
In terms of his political accomplishments over a political career that spanned over three decades in the House of Commons, what stands out was his social activism in the late 1960s, his management of a Trudeau minority government in 1972 and his role in the fall of the Clark Government in 1979. Perhaps more long-lasting were MacEachen's efforts to reform and manage the House of Commons as President of the Privy Council. The records in the fonds support and illustrate these various activities and events.
A central aspect of MacEachen's political life was his preoccupation with and concern for Nova Scotia, generally, and more especially for the people of his own riding of Canso-Inverness, later Cape Breton Highlands - Canso in Cape Breton. In this, he continued in the tradition of Maritime and Nova Scotia politics, very personal with often direct interventions by the Minister. MacEachen was the Liberal Minister responsible for the Maritimes and often for Atlantic Canada for most of his political career. Indeed, the records are full of correspondence, reports and analyses of the federal government's interactions with and support of the province.
The fonds also contains MacEachen's constituency records, and this is a deliberate decision to document these interactions and to demonstrate politics played out at the riding level. There is much correspondence, ministerial and personal, on the Minster's riding, on Cape Breton and Nova Scotia. There are reports, for example, relating to constituency clinics, which were held all over his riding, and which recorded detailed local and personal issues and problems. The clinic reports also documented proposed solutions, an intervention on the part of the Minister, a follow-up meeting with staff from MacEachen's constituency office, or a letter from MacEachen to another federal Minister or a provincial or municipal counterpart. There is much information on federal regional development programs affecting Nova Scotia, and much documentation on the Cape Breton Development Corporation, the Sydney Steel Corporation and the development of a heavy water plant in Glace Bay. Finally, on a personal level, there are multiple files on the two homes MacEachen maintained in Nova Scotia, one in Antigonish, just around the corner from where he went to university, and another on Lake Ainsley, in Cape Breton.
An additional aspect of MacEachen's long political career is related to his selection and promotion of professional staff, many of whom, but not all, studied at Saint Francis Xavier and who were recruited directly into staff positions in the various Ministerial Offices managed by MacEachen. These included Frank McKenna, a future Premier of New Brunswick, Sean Riley, a future President of SFX, Bill MacEachren, special assistant and executive assistant and later MLA for Inverness County, Alasdair Graham, a former assistant and later Senator and Peter King, a Halifax businessman. Of note too, was his long association with his office managers, Pearl Hunter and Alain Dudoit. Pearl Hunter worked as MacEachen's office manager in virtually all of MacEachen's Ministerial Offices. Dudoit was brought over as a liaison between the Canadian International Development Agency and Foreign Affairs during MacEachen's first tenure as Minister of External Affairs in 1974. Dudoit stayed on as MacEachen's special assistant of Foreign Affairs and later enjoyed a long career in the Foreign Service, serving as Ambassador to the Czech and Slovaks Republics and later Spain.
MacEachen was summoned to the Senate in June 1984, and was appointed Leader of the Government in the Senate. In September 1984, he became Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, and held that position until 1991. Mr. MacEachen's role as the Majority Leader of the Senate, particularly during the 1984-1991 period, was noteworthy. During this period, Mr. MacEachen occupied the unofficial role of Leader of the Opposition, following the landslide federal election victory of the Mulroney Government in 1984. As the Opposition Senate Leader, representing the majority in the Senate, Mr. MacEachen and his Liberal colleagues opposed many of the initiatives put forward by the new Conservative Government. These initiatives included the North American Free Trade Agreement, the imposition of the GST, Bill C-103, an act to establish the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency, Bill C-124, an act to amend the Canadian Labour Code and others. The decision, taken in 1991, by the Conservative Government to add Conservative Senators to the Senate ended Mr. MacEachen's role as a significant obstacle to an advancing Progressive Conservative Party agenda.
Mr. MacEachen began work on his memoirs before and after his retirement from the Senate in 1996, submitting a draft of the first nine chapters to a publisher in 2002. This draft, which covered Mr. MacEachen's early life growing up in Inverness, Nova Scotia, his formative years at St. Francis Xavier University and his political career up to 1968, was never completed.
Finally, two other aspects of Mr. MacEachen's character are worth mentioning. He was a devout Roman Catholic and he had an unquenchable interest in all things related to his Celtic heritage. The former was a private matter, rarely discussed, but often noted in the many biographical pieces composed about MacEachen. The latter was manifested in a multitude of expressions and ways. MacEachen spoke Gaelic, travelled to New Zealand to meet the descendants of a Cape Breton Scottish diaspora in 1976. He had an immense personal interest in his Scottish genealogy, sponsored a legendary annual summer ceilidh at his property on Lake Ainsley, supported organizations to preserve Scottish music and culture, often sported a kilt in public and was a key supporter in bringing the International Gathering of the Clans in Nova Scotia in 1979.
Mr. MacEachen died in Nova Scotia on September 12, 2017, age 96. He was laid to rest in Stella Maris Parish, in Inverness, Nova Scotia, where he had been baptised 96 years earlier. 800 people attended his traditional Catholic ceremony, lauding his many political accomplishments, his devotion to his community and his love of Cape Breton culture.
