BETSY DEWAR BOYCE Betsy Dewar Boyce was born in Hamilton, Ontario. Enabled by a scholarship that paid for all tuition fees, she graduated from McMaster University. A year in Toronto at Osgoode Hall followed, but she had to give up any hope of a career in law because this was in the great depression and funds had completely dried up. Marriage to George Boyce, an engineer, meant moving to the Porcupine gold mining camp where two of her three children were born. After living in several places, Trenton was home for 17 years. On her first visit to Belleville, Betsy saw a bronze plaque of Sir Mackenzie Bowell, Prime Minister of Canada 1894 to 1896. She was surprised to find such a distinguished citizen was almost unknown even in his home town. Curiosity about this man was later strong enough to sustain years of trying to discover as much as possible about Mackenzie Bowell.   Mackenzie Bowell in Orange Lodge regalia THE ACCIDENTAL PRIME MINISTER Publisher: Seventh Town Historical Society Author: Betsy Dewar Boyce Format: CD-ROM only. For both Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Macintosh, using Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded. Price: $23.22 CAN, including shipping and taxes ISBN: 0-9691935-5-6 Year: 2001 Pages: 341, PDF files Photos: Black and white portraits, cartoons Category: Local history, biography Mackenzie Bowell was the fifth prime minister of Canada, in office from December 1894 to April 1896. The author calls him the accidental prime minister because, more than most, he was put into office by an unusual chain of events involving deaths of short-term predecessors. Since his death in 1917 he has had an increasingly bad press, often suffering worse abuse than he received from the Liberal opposition during his lifetime. This is largely because the writers either do not know the prevailing beliefs of Canadians in the 19th century, or are too uncomfortable with the knowledge to accept it. Bowell's conviction of the superiority of Britain over all other nations was, during his lifetime, exactly the same as that of the majority of Canadians. Most also believed that other races were inferior to the white race and, outside Quebec, other languages inferior to English. Many of them thought Catholicism was a religion of superstition and ignorance, while Protestantism stood for enlightenment. This is the origin of the acronym WASP: white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant. Mackenzie Bowell was an Orangeman and Orangeism was for a hundred years one of the most powerful political influences in this country. A Toronto columnist wrote in 1998 that Mackenzie Bowell was "influential with the lunatic fringe of the electorate." Those for whom history goes back no further than about 1950 could well say that. Since the end of the1939-45 war, however, the population of Canada has changed beyond recognition. Until then Mackenzie Bowell represented the fabric of Ontario society. He might have had an uneventful career in office, as others have done, had it not been for the cataclysm caused by the Manitoba Schools Question. The Manitoba government passed an act eliminating their French, Roman Catholic schools although these were guaranteed by their constitution. This became the defining issue of Mackenzie Bowell's short term in the prime minister's office. Bowell was a newspaper publisher in Belleville, Ontario, and is buried in Belleville. TO ORDER THIS CD: Write to: Seventh Town Historical Society, Box 35, Ameliasburg, Ontario, K0K 1A0 www.quinte-kin.com HOME | SITE MAP | ORDERING INFO | AUTHOR SIGNUP | ADVERTISE | CONTACT US