The Key to Laurier's Success

The key to Laurier's success, as it had been with Macdonald before him, was his ability to bring men--since no woman voted, let alone sat at the Cabinet table, before 1917--representing different interests together and to make them work as a team. Of special importance to Laurier was harmonizing the interests and sentiments of French and English Canadians. And as the country grew, the task increased in complexity, because regional demands joined ethnic tensions, religious rivalries, and class conflict. For fifteen years Laurier proved himself the unrivaled master of a turbulent political scene. But by 1911 even he could no longer keep command.

--Ramsay Cook, "The Triumph and Trials of Materialism, 1900-1945," in The Illustrated History of Canada, 25th Anniversary ed., ed. Craig Brown (2012; repr., Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017), 404.