Doherty came from that nineteenth-century world of intermarriage between well-to-do Irish Catholic Quebeckers and francophone Quebeckers that produced surprisingly extensive bilingual/bicultural networks within elite Quebec circles. It still exists to some degree. Indeed I once interviewed the Supreme Court of Canada Justice Charles Gonthier, who turned out to be Charles-Doherty Gonthier, who had had a very bilingual, bicultural upbringing in Montreal and Ottawa and was a grandson of Charles Doherty.
Charles Doherty was a Conservative MP from a Montreal constituency from 1908 to 1921, and Robert Borden's Minister of Justice. Glassford brings out his role in the War Measures Act of 1914, the conscription crisis of 1917, the Winnipeg General Strike prosecutions of 1919, and the Paris Peace talks, and his (perhaps surprising?) support for Canadian (and for Irish) autonomy from Britain.
Reading the biography, I'm also struck by how, uh, interesting, an MP's parliamentary career could actually be in the early twentieth century. As an opposition backbencher in 1910, Doherty helped save Robert Borden when the party caucus voted on whether or not to remove him from the party leadership. Several times he worked to defend party policy from restive backbenchers and hostile public opinion in Quebec, while trying to defend Quebec interests and minority rights, often enough without much support from the Borden government. Glassford writes, "Behind cabinet doors, Doherty did not hesitate to speak his mind..."
Cabinet ministers with views? A backbencher who had to defend the leader against his restive colleagues? Nobody is likely to write that kind of stuff when some distant volume of the DCB starts to cover the current crop of MPs and cabinet ministers. Pity.
Update, October 13: The Beaver of 2002 has a lively story about conscription, Catholicism, and the Doherty family that is cited in the DCB bio: "The Guelph Raid" by Mark Reynolds.
Also, can't resist reposting this from the American blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money, about the travails of another legislature:
Suppose you were to combine a parliamentary system, in which a majority of the legislature could bring down the government at any time, with a presidential system, in which no government would then be in place until the next fixed election seated a new legislature, even if that event was, say, 16 months away?
What would happen? Let’s tune in to America: 2023 and find out!
