Maud Montgomery called Macdonald “a spry-looking old man — not handsome but pleasant-faced” when she met him on P.E.I. in 1890.

       Courtesy of Library and Archives Canada/C-005327.

      There were no pensions for ex-ministers: Macdonald sometimes joked that he needed his $8,000 salary. During his illness in 1881, he had been sued for debt, but a well-wisher settled the case for $2,500. Challenged to explain the transaction, Macdonald pleaded that he had borrowed the cash because “not being a rich man, I had not the money at the time.” The Globe alleged a kickback from a railway contractor, but Macdonald insisted that he repaid the loan, in two instalments, and with interest. He also paid 7 percent annual interest on a $1,000 long-term loan from his sister Louisa, money that he assured her was soundly invested to make her rich “when I kick the bucket.” By 1887, the fund had grown to $10,900: presumably the dividends easily covered the $70 a year that Louisa received. Macdonald purchased the Ottawa mansion “Earnscliffe” in 1883, but five years later he grumbled that renovations caused by dry rot “ruined” him. The bedrock of his finances was the $67,500 testimonial fund collected for him in 1871–72. Invested in six percent debentures, this yielded $4,050 a year — but in 1890 the bonds were refinanced at four percent, costing him $1,350 annually. “I must leave office ere long,” he grumbled in January 1891, “& my income will be reduced”: he wanted the capital invested in British Columbia mortgages, which paid seven percent.

      In addition to Earnscliffe, insured in 1890 for $15,000, and the testimonial fund, Macdonald left $80,000 of his own money at his death — equal to the sum he had lost in 1869. There is no evidence for the subsequent rumour that his unexpected prosperity resulted from siphoning off political contributions for personal use. Macdonald’s concern for his finances was understandable. His daughter, Mary, could never live an independent life: two full-time carers supported Agnes in looking after her, and much money was spent on unsuccessful medical treatment. To his credit, Macdonald neither exploited his handicapped daughter to win sympathy nor did he deny her existence: a wheelchair-access gallery at Earnscliffe enabled her to watch guests arriving for prime-ministerial dinner parties.

      What might Macdonald do as an ex-prime minister? He cherished an impossible dream, to remain in the House of Commons, in alliance with Campbell in the Senate, to “take care of the Constitution.” In fairness to any successor, Macdonald would have to leave Parliament — but what would he do and where would he live? Sometimes, he talked of writing political memoirs. He derided rumours that he might become governor general: “even if I had any aspirations, there is not the most remote chance of their being satisfied.” Co-existing with the detested Mowat as lieutenant-governor of Ontario was impossible. British admirers hoped that Macdonald “would take his place in English society, which he was so well qualified to adorn.” But London was an expensive city, and the British government would probably have named him to the House of Lords, an honour he could neither refuse nor afford. Tupper also wanted to make him a lord — and send him to Washington as British (and Canadian) ambassador.

      Macdonald almost retired in the summer of 1888. “My only difficulty is about my successor,” he told his secretary. Tupper refused the leadership, urging that it was Quebec’s “turn” to provide Canada’s prime minister. Hence Macdonald fell back on Hector Langevin: “there is no one else.” Langevin wanted the job, but he was dragged down by bitter Quebec political feuding. The eventual compromise successor, the government’s bilingual Senate leader, John Abbott, Macdonald thought unqualified. His senior colleagues had been subordinates for so long that it was hard to imagine any of them as a leader. Of the two possible younger candidates, fifty-one-year-old D’Alton McCarthy had refused even to join the Cabinet, while Thompson, fifty-two, was an abrasive Nova Scotian, “very able and a fine fellow,” said Macdonald, but Ontario’s vocal Protestants would not forgive his conversion to Catholicism.

      In 1890, Macdonald’s son Hugh thought there was “practically no Conservative Party in Canada,” only “a very strong ‘John A.’ Party” which would disintegrate “when any one else attempts to take command.” “All very well so long as you drive the coach but that cannot last for-ever,” his friend Gowan commented in 1887. Once Macdonald departed, “then the danger comes of a smash up.” Some pinned their hopes on divine intervention. Weeks before his death, a deferential bureaucrat assured Macdonald that the Almighty would not summon him “until He has prepared some one fit in some measure to assume your fallen mantle.” In default of an obvious successor, it became tempting to assume that Macdonald would go on forever. “You’ll never die, John A.!” a loyal supporter had once shouted. As testimony to the devotion he inspired, it was touching. As a political strategy, it represented myopic denial.

      In June and July 1888, Canada’s underground fires erupted anew. Premier Mercier suddenly cut through the long-running issue of Quebec’s Jesuits’ Estates, which legally belonged to the province but were morally the property of the Catholic Church. Mercier boldly ignored clerical quarrels over the distribution of the spoils, dividing the Estates among all possible stakeholders — even Quebec’s Protestants were bought off. His master stroke was a provision that the act would take effect when “ratified by the Pope,” which triggered knee-jerk Ontario demands to block this affront to Queen Victoria’s authority. Mercier hurried to Ottawa to ask if his act would be disallowed. “Do you take me for a damn fool?” Macdonald responded. When the matter was raised in Parliament, he bluntly argued that the Quebec legislature “could do what they liked” with provincial property. Disallowance would trigger “the misery and the wretchedness” of religious and ethnic strife.

      Only thirteen MPs voted for Ottawa to veto the Jesuits’ Estates Act, but one of them was D’Alton McCarthy. No longer a potential leader, McCarthy almost bolted the party altogether. He encouraged the Manitoba government to ban French from its classrooms and stop funding Catholic schools: incomers from Ontario disliked the bicultural institutions established in 1870. Macdonald