‘Canada’s greatest prime minister was a mama’s boy,’ Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life

Christopher Dummit is shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust’s Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for his book Unbuttoned: A History of Mackenzie King’s Secret Life published by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Mr. and Mrs. John King, left, with their son William Lyon Mackenzie King, right, at the Scarborough Fair in 1911. Canada’s greatest prime minister was a mama’s boy. Not only that, he was a sexually repressed, hypocritical, ghost-talking, spiritualism practising, guilt-ridden, prostitute-visiting mama’s boy. Or so Canadians learned in 1976, writes Chritopher Dummit. Library and Archives Canada photograph by William James

Feature

April 30, 2018

Canada’s greatest prime minister was a mama’s boy. Not only that, he was a sexually repressed, hypocritical, ghost-talking, spiritualism practising, guilt-ridden, prostitute-visiting mama’s boy. Or so Canadians learned in 1976. That was Mackenzie King’s annus horribilis, when the “Weird W...

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