UFV history professor Barbara Messamore is quoted in a Maclean’s survey of Canada’s 23 prime ministers, published today on Oct 7.<\/p>\n
A panel of 123 academics and journalists, from Canada and around the world, rated the country’s leaders since Confederation in 1867, on a scale of 0 to 5.<\/p>\n
Top ratings went to W.L. Mackenzie King (PM, 1921-48 with two brief gaps), who scored 4.76, and Quebecer Wilfrid Laurier (PM 1896-1911), close behind on 4.62.<\/p>\n
Dr Messamore is one of a handful of experts directly quoted.<\/p>\n
Where others praised Laurier for his Canadian spirit of compromise, Messamore criticized him for ‘moral evasion’, citing his abandonment of Manitoba’s French-speaking minority.<\/p>\n
Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, who ushered British Columbia into Confederation back in 1871, ranks third, scoring 4.59.<\/p>\n
The jury’s out on Justin Trudeau, but with 3.27 he could be poised to overtake his father, who scores 4.10.<\/p>\n
BC’s only national leader, Kim Campbell, has the lowest rating, 1.36 — hardly surprising, as she only held office for five months in 1993.<\/p>\n
The Maclean’s 7 October survey is at: http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/politics\/ottawa\/ranking-canadas-best-and-worst-prime-ministers\/<\/a><\/p>\n — submitted by UFV adjunct faculty member Ged Martin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n 10\/31\/2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UFV history professor Barbara Messamore is quoted in a Maclean’s survey of Canada’s 23 prime ministers, published today on Oct 7. A panel of 123 academics and journalists, from Canada and around the world, rated the country’s leaders since Confederation in 1867, on a scale of 0 to 5. Top ratings went to W.L. Mackenzie … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insider","category-ufv-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12297"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12319,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12297\/revisions\/12319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ufv.ca\/announce\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}