Lester B. Pearson - Party Leadership

Party Leadership

St. Laurent was defeated by the Progressive Conservatives under John Diefenbaker in the 1957 election. After just a few months as Leader of the Opposition, St. Laurent retired and endorsed Pearson as his successor. Pearson was elected leader of the Liberal Party at its 1958 leadership convention, defeating his chief rival, cabinet minister Paul Joseph James Martin.

At his first parliamentary session as Opposition Leader, Pearson asked Diefenbaker to give power back to the Liberals without an election, because of a recent economic downturn. This strategy backfired when Diefenbaker showed a classified Liberal document saying that the economy would face a downturn in that year. This contrasted heavily with the Liberals' 1957 campaign promises.

Consequently, Pearson's party was badly routed in the election of that year, losing over half their seats, while Diefenbaker's Conservatives won the largest majority ever seen in Canada to that point (208 of 265 seats). The election also cost the Liberals their Quebec stronghold; the province had voted largely Liberal in federal elections since the Conscription Crisis of 1917, but the province had no favourite son leader, as they had since 1948.

Pearson convened a significant 'Thinkers' Conference' at Kingston, Ontario in 1960, which developed many of the ideas later implemented when he became prime minister.

In the 1962 election, his party reduced the Tories to a minority government.

Not long after the election, Pearson capitalized on the Conservatives' indecision on installing nuclear warheads on Bomarc missiles. Minister of National Defence Douglas Harkness resigned from Cabinet on 4 February 1963, because of Diefenbaker's opposition to accepting the missiles. The next day, the government lost two non-confidence motions on the issue, forcing an election. In that election, the Liberals took 129 seats to the Tories' 95. Despite winning 41 percent of the vote, the Liberals came up five seats short of a majority largely due to winning only three seats in the Prairies. With the support of the New Democratic Party, Pearson won enough support to form a minority government, and was sworn in as prime minister on 22 April.