The Offspring of Canadian Prime Ministers

Hugh John Macdonald (L), the son of Canada’s first prime minister John A. Macdonald, with Charles Tupper, the sixth prime minister, in 1900. Public Domain

Commentary

It’s interesting how talent in a family gets passed down—or doesn’t. Sir Winston Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph, was a brilliant statesman who rose rapidly but died at 45. Sir Winston lived twice as long, was considered a failure until the crisis of 1940, and was then seen as the saviour of England for the rest of his life. His son Randolph, in turn, was a hard-drinking hack whose only achievement was getting started on the official biography of his father, most of which was completed by Sir Martin Gilbert.

Potential greatness and its burdens are “a subject of perennial fascination and enquiry,” according to Debrett’s Peerage. Just as Canada’s most compelling prime minister was Sir John A. Macdonald (no amount of Bolshie muckraking can change that), so the most interesting progeny was his noble and independent-minded son, Sir Hugh John Macdonald. Hugh served as an MP and cabinet minister and was briefly the premier of Manitoba, but he could never escape the shadow of his father. Still, he deserves an article all to himself—next time.

Now, what about the rest?

Not all prime ministers were family men, knowing the responsibility, joys, and sorrows of family life. Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Robert Borden, W.L.M. King, R.B. Bennett, John Diefenbaker, and Kim Campbell were all childless. King and Bennett never married.

The second prime minister, Alexander Mackenzie (1873–1878), had three children with his first wife, Helen Neil, but only their daughter, Mary, survived infancy. She was a cherished companion to him and read to him in old age. She married the Rev. John Thomson, an immigrant from England and a teacher who once won an oyster dinner on a bet that he could recite the entire first book of “The Aeneid,” in Latin, from memory.

Christopher Plummer, Prime Minister John Abbott’s great-grandson, and Julie Andrews on the set of “The Sound of Music” in 1964. Public Domain

Sir John Abbott (1891–1892) had four sons with Lady Mary. The eldest, William, married Mary Gray, daughter of Col. Gray, a Father of Confederation and premier of Prince Edward Island. Another son, John, was an artist and curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. The stage and screen actor Christopher Plummer, whose first hits were playing Henry V and Cyrano at Stratford, and whose greatest film hit was “The Sound of Music” (1965), was Abbott’s great-grandson, being the son of Isabella Mary Abbott.

A cousin, Maude Abbott, was one of McGill University’s first female graduates, studied medicine at Bishop’s University and Montreal General Hospital, and became curator of the Historical Medical Museum and assistant professor of medicine at Canada’s top university, McGill. She pioneered research into heart disease in babies, publishing the “Atlas of Congenital Cardiac Disease” in 1936.

Sir John Thompson, Canada’s fourth prime minister, on Nov. 10, 1844. CP Photo

Sir John Thompson (1892–1894) and Annie Affleck had nine children, five of whom survived. The more illustrious of his two sons, both educated at Stonyhurst College in the UK, was Lt.-Col. John Thomas Connolly Thompson, whose namesake was the Bishop-Father of Confederation. He became a World War I hero, wounded, mentioned in dispatches, and awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He served with the Governor General’s Body Guard (124th Pioneer Battalion), rising to Commanding Officer of engineers, and died in 1952. Of the premier’s three daughters, Mary Aloysia (“Babe”), Mary Helena, and Frances Alice (“Frankie”), Babe and Helena attended the Sacred Heart convent school in Paris and all were later married.

The descendants of Sir Mackenzie Bowell (1894–1896) and Lady Harriet mostly lived private lives in Belleville, Ontario. Their daughter, Evalyn, was widowed young and looked after her father. In 1916, showing great stamina, Bowell at the age of 93 travelled on the Canadian Pacific Railway to visit his eldest son, John Moore Bowell, who worked for the Customs Department in Vancouver. Evalyn probably went with him, although that cannot be verified. He also visited the Yukon, travelling via Alaska by coastal steamship, railway, and river-steamer, then made the return journey to Belleville where he died the following year at his William St. house.

Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, the second son of Prime Minister Charles Tupper. Public Domain

Sir Charles Tupper (1896) and Lady Frances had three sons and three daughters of whom two died in infancy. William Johnston Tupper worked in the law firm of Hugh John Macdonald, served as a Manitoba MLA and president of the Law Society, and became lieutenant governor. His older brother, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, inherited the Baronetcy along with his father’s arrogant “bumptiousness,” according to Macdonald. Educated at King’s College, Windsor, McGill and Harvard, “Charly” joined the Halifax firm of Sir John Thompson, where Robert Borden, who later became prime minister, was also employed. Tupper was elected to the House of Commons for Pictou in 1882. Macdonald gave him the Department of Marine and Fisheries in 1888, at 32 the youngest minister to date. Having lost his seat, he moved to Vancouver in 1897.

During World War I, Charles H. Tupper lobbied in vain for positions for friends and his own sons at a time when Sir Robert Borden was cracking down on patronage. Reginald Hibbert Tupper, a lieutenant with the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish), was invalided home, severely wounded during the Second Battle of Ypres in April 1915. By 1917, Tupper’s three other sons were serving on the Western Front. When Victor Gordon Tupper, a captain in the 16th Scottish (Manitoba Regiment), was killed at Vimy on April 9 at age 21, his father became furious: “Had I been Prime Minister and you had worthy sons,” he fulminated, “I would have struggled to see that the chances” of a staff job “were at least offered to them.” Tupper’s wife begged him to accept divine providence, but he never forgave Borden.

As a footnote, the sixth baronet, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper, born 1964, lived in Nanaimo, B.C., at the time of his father the fifth baronet’s death in West Vancouver in 2008. He keeps a low profile, has a daughter, Cara-Lyn, born 1991, and it is not clear who would next inherit the title which, because he doesn’t use it, is considered dormant but not extinct.

Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1896–1911) and his wife Zoé had no children but it was rumoured that Armand Lavergne, a lawyer who served as MP for Montmagny, was his illegitimate son. It is true that Laurier had an affair with Armand’s mother, Émilie, and the young man bore a strong resemblance. But there is no proof, and French Canadians often resemble each other because two-thirds of the gene pool are descended from 2,600 early settlers.

Sen. Michael Meighen walks past the portrait of his grandfather Arthur Meighen, the ninth prime minister of Canada, during an unveiling ceremony on Parliament Hill on Feb. 16, 2011. The Canadian Press/Fred Chartrand

Arthur Meighen (1920–21 and 1926) and his wife Isabel’s daughter Lillian married musician Don Wright and became a Toronto philanthropist. Both sons attended the Royal Military College and served in World War II. Theodore Roosevelt O’Neil “Ted” Meighen was a lawyer, rose to lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Canadian Artillery, and in 1969 established the charitable Meighen Foundation in Toronto. Maxwell Charles Gordon “Max” Meighen OBE was a financier and served in the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps (later Corps of Royal Canadian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), retiring as a colonel. Ted’s son, Michael Arthur Meighen, was a lawyer and philanthropist appointed to the Senate in 1990 by Brian Mulroney.

Louis St. Laurent (1948–1957) and Jeanne Renault had two sons and three daughters of whom the most distinguished was Jean-Paul Stephen St. Laurent, a lawyer and Liberal MP for Témiscouata. He lost his seat in the great Diefenbaker sweep. A grandson, Louis St. Laurent, a lawyer, moved to Florida in 1960 and became a U.S. citizen and state prosecutor, dying in 2023. A great grandson, Jared St-Laurent, was a wrestler in Florida under the name “Mister Saint Laurent,” became president of the Lingerie Fighting Championships this year, and posts as @MSL. (It’s an interesting lineage, to be sure.)

Lester Pearson (1963–1968) and his wife Maryon had one daughter, Patricia, who avoided public life, putting family first. Their son Geoffrey was a career diplomat, Ambassador to the Soviet Union, and wrote “Seize the Day: Lester B. Pearson and Crisis Diplomacy.” He married Landon Hockin Pearson, a children’s rights advocate named to the Senate in 1994 by Jean Chrétien. There are many grandchildren, notably Michael Pearson, who published “Private Letters, Public Matters: The Family Correspondence of Lester B. Pearson” this year.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his sons Alexandre, Justin, and Michel watch the Canada Day ceremonies on Parliament Hill on July 1, 1983. CP photo/Fred Chartrand

Pierre Trudeau, who served as Canada’s 15th prime minister, had three sons with Margaret Sinclair, the oldest of whom, Justin, was prime minister from 2015–2025. Sarah Coyne, Pierre’s daughter with Deborah Coyne when he was 71, moved to the United States to escape the limelight.

Joe Clark (1979–1980) and Maureen McTeer had a daughter, Catherine, who pursued a career in broadcasting and became a TV talk show host.

John Turner, who was dubbed “Canada’s Kennedy” in the early 1960s and made headlines for briefly dating Princess Margaret, was prime minister from June to September 1984. He and Geills McCrae Kilgour had a daughter, Elizabeth, and three sons, Michael, David, and Andrew. David, who made a career in insurance, died in 2021, only 52.

(L-R) Former Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney, Joe Clark, Paul Martin, and Kim Campbell during an event in Toronto on Feb. 20, 2007. CP PHOTO/Aaron Harris

Next came Brian Mulroney, who was in office from 1984 to 1993. He and Mila Mulroney’s four children have made a mark in law, business, politics, and media.

Kim Campbell, the first and only female prime minister of Canada, served from June to November 1993. She has been married three times but never had any children.

Of Jean Chrétien and Aline Chaîné’s three children, the oldest, France, a lawyer, married André Desmarais of the influential Power Corporation.

Paul and Sheila Martin have three sons, Paul, Jamie, and David. All serve on the board of directors of CSL Group Inc., a Power Corp. subsidiary acquired by their father in 1988.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, son Ben, and daughter Rachel take part in the lighting of the Christmas lights on Parliament Hill on Dec. 7, 2006. CP Photo/Jonathan Hayward

Stephen and Laureen Harper have two children, Ben and Rachel. Ben, who studied for a master’s degree in economics at Columbia University, worked in the Alberta legislature in 2020, including as an aide in then-Premier Jason Kenney’s office.

Justin Trudeau has three children with Sophie Gregoire, Xavier, Ella-Grace, and Hadrien. Xavier, the oldest, is pursuing a singing career.

Mark Carney and Diana Fox have four children.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.