William Lyon Mackenzie King

From 1920 to the late 1940s, Canadian politics was dominated by the ever-cautious William Lyon Mackenzie King. As leader of the Liberal party from 1919 to 1948, he served as Prime Minister for over two decades. A consummate politician with an uncanny grasp of the public mood, King governed Canada through an unstable period of depression and war. Brokering interests to maintain harmony was his speciality. It was King who, albeit reluctantly, laid the foundations of the Canadian welfare state, bringing in measures such as old age pensions, unemployment insurance and family allowances.  A competent wartime leader, he avoided a crisis over conscription through compromise. A complex individual with a raft of personal eccentricities, King was also responsible for one of the most tantalizing documents in Canadian political history – his diary, which he kept for almost 60 years.