The Hon. J. A. Calder has never seen the Sphinx. But he has a looking glass. He has never been in Egypt. But he has lived a long while in Saskatchewan. A man who can continue to know as much as he knows about the confessional side of government, and who can say so little, has some claim to be considered—Canada's political Sphinx.

Such a reputation is sometimes enviable. The average public man babbles. Often he talks to conceal thought or as a substitute for action. The mental energy needed to turn end for end what some of these garrulous people say, in order to decipher just what they mean, is usually more than the wisdom is worth. Calder spares us. He tells us nothing. His silence may be golden, or it may be just a habit; but from the known character of Calder it is never the omniscience of stupidity.

A Sphinx in action may sometimes give himself away. It is not usual for a Sphinx to do anything except to conceal the riddle. Calder has all his life been a busy man. He is still in middle age. All but fourteen years of his life up till 1917 he spent in the West, most of it in the part now known as Saskatchewan. Ten years ago he was furtively discussed as successor to Laurier. He is now a Unionist-Liberal. To give him work in the administration commensurate with his ability—or somewhere near it—a new department was created in Immigration. Now he is slated for the Senate!

Little was heard about Calder's department. He had a publicity bureau which did not spend vast amounts of money on diffusing information. The department is said to contain a moving picture section, some of whose films probably creep into Canadian movie houses. But nobody ever saw a picture of J. A. Calder on a screen. He had a Canadian novelist as chief of publicity. That novelist might have yearned for the chance to immortalize his chief in a story, but so long as he is in the pay of Mr. Calder's department he will continue to yearn. And not even he has been given to understand why when a reconstructed Liberal like Mr. Rowell left the Cabinet at the appointment of Premier Meighen, the Minister of Immigration stayed on. One might surmise that the man who, a decade ago, looked to some people like an Elisha to Laurier, would run again in Moosejaw as a National Liberal Conservative with the expectation of re-entering the Cabinet, probably as Minister of the Interior. But he was suddenly and humdrumly designated for the Senate.

Apparently the Sphinx is not a great deal concerned over the fact that his action in the case would throw some light on the sort of government we may expect, and the kind of man we are privileged to conjecture Mr. Calder to be. He seems to take very little interest in what any one thinks about him. He accompanied the Premier on his Western trip. Now and then he made a speech. He was heckled. He was in the land of his critics, where he was unofficially known as "Jim". What did he mean by staying in a Government which was supposed to have finished its work in 1919? Was he coming back as a Liberal? Had he no longer any fellow-feeling for the farmers among whom he had lived for so long? The Sphinx did not directly say. He was publicly and conventionally endorsing the Premier, who was well able to speak for himself on behalf of the administration.

Calder was headmaster of Moosejaw High School when he was twenty-three, in the year 1891. He must have learned reticence then. Up in Edmonton, a few years later one heard considerably of Goggin, the speechmaking educationist of the prairie; rarely or never of Calder, who about that time was Inspector of Schools for the Territories, not yet provinces. The silent young inspector must have looked like the reincarnation of Socrates as he drove—sometimes a four-horse team on a buckboard—through the sloughs of the Northwest. No prairie doctor with a radius of fifty miles, none but a pioneer missionary like McDougall or Robertson, ever had so glorious a chance to study what the life of a new country was going to be, as this inspector toiling hundreds of miles over a land, where, if he stopped at three school-houses a week, he was doing a good average in bad weather.

Regina had no party politics then. All it had was the mounted police and a leg-boot legislature. Every man was then a trailsman. In Calder's time as Inspector, there were only 400 miles of railway north of the C.P.R. main line—the two branches to Prince Albert and to Edmonton. It was only in the last year or two of this buckboard and broncho inspectorate that there were even any Doukhobors in that part of the world to bring back the days of Adam and Eve. He saw all the "nationals" beginning to arrive. He could put his finger on a gaunt anemic map of the Territories and point out just where there was beginning to be some nucleus of a foreign settlement. He could talk a little Cree and he learned the jargon of several countries in Europe. He saw the farmers arise, and railways begin, and little villages dot the skyline, and here and there an elevator, when a box car was looked at by a trailsman as a small boy gapes at a circus parade.

Calder lived in Regina when politics was born. He shares with Frank Oliver the memory of the day when Nicholas Flood Davin was the wonder orator of the West, and when freight-carters from Winnipeg to Edmonton via Saskatoon, which was then a temperance colony, carried demijohns of whisky on traders' permits to make everybody at home ingloriously drunk, including the mounted police. He recalls the day when the first lieutenant-governor was inaugurated in Regina and what Frank Oliver said about it. Four years he was Deputy Commissioner of Education for the Territories up till the inauguration of two new Provinces when, travelling on a thousand miles of new railway and over the old main line of the C.P.R., Laurier paid his first visit to the Great West and discovered as one of its greatest potentialities J. A. Calder, who under Premier Scott became Provincial Treasurer and Commissioner of Education.

To people outside Saskatchewan—even in Alberta, he was very little known—Calder has always been a somewhat nebulous figure; to some critics, a rather suspicious character; but always—clever. Being a Sphinx he never courted popularity and seldom got it. Scott was brilliant, popular and impulsive. His chief executive in Education, Railways and Telephones and Premier de facto during more than half of Scott's term, was cold and calculating. The West prefers warm-blooded politicians. Calder succeeded in spite of his manner, or his mask, or whatever it may have been; and he did it by a penetrating knowledge of the country, a superb capacity as administrator and a talent for keeping out of trouble. He was no man for prima donna scenes. Even the Education Department, a witch's cauldron of troubles over the Separate School question in the new provinces, never entangled him in theatricals. He was unpopular with the Opposition as soon as the new Government began, because he was regarded as a Civil Service interloper. What business had a school inspector in politics, and in a Cabinet?

Calder demonstrated that best when he handed over the educational cauldron to Scott and became Minister of Railways and Telephones. Here was a department of utility administration in which he shone. He had great political executive ability. When Scott was absent more than half his time through illness, Calder was Premier. There was no other man to choose. The liquor problem was more his to handle than the Premier's. Calder did not share the popular enthusiasm for Government-dispensed liquor. He knew the weaknesses of officials and the historic thirst of the prairie. The Opposition constantly accused him of being in league with the liquor men. Calder made no denial or affirmation. He was Mephisto enough to let people wonder whether he was one thing or the opposite.

A man who knew Calder twenty-two years ago gave, not long ago, some impressions of the Minister in connections with the liquor administration.

"About two weeks after Saskatchewan went dry," he said, "I was spending a night in one of the larger towns in the Province. Among the other guests at the hotel was a member of the Government. In the lobby an interesting argument waged throughout the evening, the Minister of course, defending the action of the Government in closing the bars. Among other things he told us about the relief work carried on by the Dominion and Provincial Governments in certain districts where there had been crop failures, in order that the destitute settlers might earn or borrow enough to keep themselves and their families through the winter. He emphasized one mistake the Government had made in not first closing every bar in the districts affected, because there were many instances where every dollar that had been earned or borrowed had been spent in the bars on the very day that it was received, by the men whose families it was intended to save from freezing and starvation.

"I was telling this afterwards to one of the leading social reformers of Saskatchewan, and a smile played over his face as I was speaking. When I had finished he said:

"'He didn't tell you the whole story. We recognized the necessity of closing those bars before that relief work was started, and urged it so strongly on the Government that they agreed to do it. The Orders-in-Council were drawn up and ready to be signed when Calder, who had been absent from the Province on business, returned and immediately it was all off.'"

Calder has a sister who is one of the leading social workers in Regina.
She has a profound regard for her talented brother Jim.

The liquor did more than even Separate Schools to disrupt Government forces in Saskatchewan. Calder was no hypocrite to weep over the moral issues in prohibition. He was not a profound governmentarian or a champion of enforced morality. A Government might own and operate telephones, but not so well consciences. The liquor administration turned out to be a mess in Saskatchewan, largely because the administration did not unanimously believe in the thing that the majority seemed to want. Calder was no more to blame than anybody else, except that he was highest in the Government when the Premier was away.

The reformers said that Calder was pro-liquor in the administration. He seemed to have no opinions about that—at least for publication. Ideals often run away with communities. If he had only spouted a little now and then he would have given people a chance to bring something home to him, and himself a chance to get near the people. Two or three scandals came up in departments over which he had control. Commissions were appointed to investigate; they always exonerated Calder. Even in the search-light on liquor—as many as four, one after another—no technical blame attached to the silent Minister. Calder may have had a contempt for either commissions or public opinion. A Sphinx is as a rule not much of a burning avenger of wrongs to the community. Besides Scott was continually running into emotional trouble. The Premier de facto had the balance to keep. He must work while other people talked.

A German-born but thoroughly loyal detective engaged by the Borden Government to report upon seditious activities of the German element who were so badly disgruntled over the Wartime Elections Act, repeated to the writer more than once with great vehemence that Mr. Calder had a special interest in the Regina Leader, which was used to get votes for the Administration, particularly among the German element. Governments had been known to own newspapers before Calder ever began. The Leader was naturally a Government organ and may have needed pap. This is a form of patronage hard to uproot.

When Scott finally retired the chief administrator did not succeed him. Martin was picked, a safe, genial and popular man. The Sphinx, it is said, might have had the post; but he preferred to stay behind the scenes. Before that he had been much talked about as a possible successor to Laurier—but with not much hope of succeeding. There are probably a number of reasons why Mr. Calder did not take the Provincial Premiership. Dig them out of Calder if you may. He has never explained. He leaves it to his commentators.

We are privileged therefore to conjecture that:

Mr. Calder was pretty well sick of Saskatchewan politics and was looking hard in almost any direction for a good way out;

Mr. Calder could see far enough into the near future of prairie politics to know that Liberalism was becoming a label for something else; and he was not disposed to come out as an Agrarian Liberal;

Mr. Calder wanted a chance to begin politics all over again, because with all his practical success he felt that he had travelled some wrong trails.

Possibly all of these had something to do with the case. At the Winnipeg Liberal Convention in 1917 he was a coalition-conscription Liberal. He worked against the Liberal machine that captured the Convention by a fluke for Laurier. Before that he was known to believe in Union Government. It was only common sense to make him one of the Prairie triumvirate—Calder, Sifton, Crerar, who carried the West into the Union. Cloudy as his career has been, for no reason that anyone specially cared to name, he might in Ottawa be a big force for the Government. He was a behind-the-scenes actor. He knew something about the art of winning elections and converting immigrants into voters. He was practical. He would be needed in Ottawa—more than he could see any use for his talent in Saskatchewan with its farmer-dominated Cabinets.

Alberta has gone Agrarian. All Saskatchewan needs is a change of label. Some psychological morning Premier Martin will get up and rub out "Liberal" after his name, buy a big farm and set up as a National Progressive. Provincial Legislatures are things to be captured. The old parties shrewdly used them in the Ottawa game. The new ones are just as apt. Too long these Western elective bodies have been on the switch. It is time to shunt them, once more, on to the main line that leads to Ottawa—with a different company label on the cars.

By no exercise of the imagination can one behold Jim Calder becoming a
Grain-Grower Progressive. The thing is anomalous.

On the other side of the Sphinx he is credited by those also who know him well in Regina with going to Ottawa purely as a patriotic duty. He wanted some work to do for the whole country bigger than any he had done in Regina. The authority formerly quoted in this article had this to say about Calder in 1917 when Calder took office in Ottawa:

"About the time of the Winnipeg Convention I was talking with the same man whom I have already quoted, and we were discussing the enigma which Calder's character and public record seemed to present. I knew that my friend was not especially a friend of Calder's, so his words seemed to carry greater weight.

"'There is no person in Canadian public life,' he said, 'who has been trying more conscientiously and consistently to be good than Calder. I will not say that his motive may be higher than that of political expediency; but he has been and is more scrupulously careful to do nothing that may reflect in any way upon his honour and integrity. I believe that he has set before him the highest possible ideal of public service and that he is doing everything he can to live up to it.'"

A prominent citizen of Regina who has seen a good deal of Calder, both in his home city and in Ottawa, has the same opinion; adding that Calder never bamboozles a deputation with suave words or false hopes; what the Cabinet thinks about any particular programme of a deputation he already knows and suggests that a typed memo, which he will present, will be as good as waiting days for a personal appeal. In 1919 he informed the writer that he proposed to enact much-needed reforms in immigrating Canada, especially as to the quality of new-comers.

Why has Mr. Calder never made a big study of this absorbing question? When the Premier went to the Imperial Conference, with his mind pretty well made up on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, why had he not in his grip, to show the Conference, one common sense, powerful little book signed by Hon. J. A. Calder, Minister of Immigration, giving a complete exposition of Japanese life in Canada? When we are all talking about the good entente with the United States why can't we get from the Immigration Department in Ottawa a hand-book giving a complete picture of what Americans have done in the West?

However, the Sphinx may have the best of reasons for not doing these simple things. But there is scarcely a Department of administration that does not regard itself as a machine for winning elections as much as for serving the people who pay for it. Apart from all he has not told us, I have no doubt Mr. Calder is doing a big reforming work on immigration in Ottawa.

The Immigration Minister should be our leading sociologist. He should be able to diagnose communities. He might easily begin upon Ottawa. What a study a cross section of the Smart Set would be, especially upon the arrival of a new king at Rideau Hall! There's nothing in other democracies quite like that. Washington has a White House, but the inmate is merely an elected servant of the State. Rideau Hall is an endowment, a gift of the gods. The 30,000 people of greater and lesser degree in Ottawa who normally or abnormally live by the Civil Service are profoundly affected by the arrival, sojourn and departure of the Governor-General. They are vitally influenced and entertained by the Parliamentary restaurant, even without the bar. The social show provided by Ministers' and members' wives and their visiting friends is itself a subtle study in the art of getting on in the new world, which is at the root of all immigration. Bridge for money and dining out with your friend's wife are within the reach of any ambitious immigrant. The Smart Set in Ottawa is an exotic colony all by itself. Montreal and Toronto and Winnipeg can merely copy it. Some of the farmers have their eye on the Set; no, not to abolish it. Women must have their share in the Government. Petticoats and politics are affinities. Farmers are no more necessarily immune from what is said to have corrupted the Roman Empire than Tories or Grits. Farmers in fact, as Mr. Calder knows, are not the hope of the world; neither are lawyers nor manufacturers.

Suppose we ask the Sphinx about this. Listen in imagination to this once Liberal, as with an astounding burst of candour he says:

"My friend, your description of my make-up may be as right or as foolish as anybody feels disposed to think. None of it bothers me. What does bother me is the law of compensation. Agree with me that the manufacturer had his drastic innings with Canadian governments; that tariffs and protected industries are the result; that lawyers—yes, I'm a lawyer—have had a big day in our affairs because they had the talent for schemes and speeches. Admit that and conclude—that the very human farmer thinks his turn is coming, and rather soon. But—somebody who was never educated as a Tory has got to help the National-Liberal-Conservative Government to get an even chance to administer this nation after the upheavals of war. Somebody who moves silently while others are talking their tongues loose may be needed to manipulate——"

Before the Sphinx could complete his statement of the case he was politely asked if he would care to inter his talents in the Canadian Senate, and he suavely answered that such a thing might be a good way to solve the conundrum, even though it would make a thoroughly stupid last act in the play.