The Victorians did mourning with style.
Can you imagine a scenario where you try to explain this to an current day American Trumpist without having their brains explode ?
Not to mention Pearson having a fair bit to do with the UN, including being President of it’s seventh General Assembly.
Not to take anything away from Pearson, but in terms of implementing a progressive agenda he had the advantage that the third party in those minority Parliaments holding the balance of power was led by Kiefer Sutherland’s grandpa.
The Greatest Canadian. 
Turner played a wide field.
Trudeau and Turner: the Liberal playboys of '68!
Everybody got a turn on the Turner.
Are you sure it was Pearson who brought in medicare? I moved to Canada in the fall of 1968 and Trudeau had been PM for several months. There was government hospitalization but not full medicare. My recollection is that only Sask. had that. Then Trudeau brought in full medicare in the summer or maybe fall of 1970. In Quebec, the doctors went on strike and then there were the FLQ (separatists) kidnappings which drove the doctors’ strike out of the headlines and the doctors drifted back to work. But for our first two years here, we paid our doctors. I recall our pediatrician charged $6 per visit.
No, it was Pearson who brought it in nationally.
The timeline was:
1962: Douglas/Lloyd governments introduce Medicare in Saskatchewan. That in turn triggers the beginning of a national debate about paying for health care.
1963: PM Diefenbaker appoints his old law-school buddy, Justice Emmett Hall of the Supreme Court, to conduct an inquiry into health care funding.
1964: Hall delivers his report, calling for the federal government to implement an extensive federally paid system of universal Medicare, even broader than the Saskatchewan model, including drug costs and dentistry. By this time, Pearson has defeated Diefenbaker and his government receives the report.
1965: Pearson government introduces legislation which it passes in 1966 to implement federally funded Medicare system, not as extensive as proposed by Hall…
1966: Parliament passes Medical Care Act to implement Medicare.
1968: Medical Care Act comes into force on July 1, 1968, after Pearson has retired and Trudeau is PM.
It still had to be implemented by each province, and some provinces and their doctors opposed it, which may be what you’re thinking of, Hari. As well, the 1966 Act didn’t ban extra-billing by doctors: they could still charge their patients, in addition to receiving the payment from the provincial Medicare system. The Trudeau government eventually ended that, by passing the Canada Health Act in 1984 to replace the Medical Care Act. However, the original basis for the national system was the 1966 Act passed by he Pearson government.
I stand corrected. But we didn’t have it in Quebec until 1970. Quebec never allowed extra billing but I know Ontario did. Maybe that’s what the strike was all about.
So was Bennett the only PM ever to get in by being elected to a first-term majority, and then get turfed out in the next election? How historically unprecedented would it be if Justin does not win a second majority in the next general election?
It would be very unexpected if Justin doesn’t get back in.
Yes, Bennett was the only one to get turfed out like that.
However, there’s also the example of Alexander Mackenzie, which was a bit different, but same result. In late 1873, the Macdonald government got defeated in the House over the Pacific Scandal and resigned. The GovGen sent for Mackenzie, the leader of the Liberals, and asked him to form a government. Mackenzie did, and without going to the Commons, he advised the GovGen to call an election, which he did.
Mackenzie and the Liberals won a majority in the election, held in early 1874, but lost to Macdonald four years later, in the 1878 election.
So, slightly different in that Mackenzie became Prime Minister first, and then won the general, but he also got turfed out after only four years.