Treasures of the Churchill Collection and the Diaries of Jim Coutts & Prime Minister Mackenzie King

In honour of the 85th anniversary of the 1941 Atlantic Charter and the 45th anniversary of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you are invited to a special Trinity College / CSAPD event celebrating the Churchill Collection. Featuring authors Ron Graham and Neville Thompson, with archival highlights from the John W. Graham Library.

The Combination Room at Trinity College was the perfect venue to bring together and “combine” two fascinating speakers, the Churchill and Coutts Archives at the John W Graham Library at Trinity College and the Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy.    The Churchill Society first partnered with Trinity College in 1995 to establish the Churchill Archives through Board Member and Librarian Linda Corman,  and eight year later, on April 26, 2003, joined for a special opening and celebration of the acquisition of the special Bart Watt collection of Churchill Archives for which CSAPD raised significant funds to keep in Canada at Trinity College.   The principal speaker then was Ron Cohen, who is responsible for the groundbreaking two volume bibliography of Sir Winston Churchill.  On May 12, 2025 Ron Cohen returned to Trinity College to speak at CSAPD’s first reunion Treasures of the Churchill Collection to re-introduce and celebrate this special world- class collection.   The event was so popular that the Treasures of the Churchill Collection Part II was organized to celebrate the recent acquisition of the diaries of Jim Coutts Principal Secretary to PM Pierre Trudeau.   April 22, 2026 was chosen to coincide with the 49th Anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms this month and the 85th Anniversary in August of the Atlantic Charter arising from the meeting of Churchill and Roosevelt at Argentia Bay Newfoundland and since 1949 a proud province of Canada

Ron Graham, author of The Jim Coutts Diaries, described what was going on behind the curtain in Ottawa during an important time in Canadian history .   Although he was characterized by critics as a master manipulator, a Rasputin-like Machiavellian figure, Coutts was closely connected to the PM and other principal key players and was a witty and brilliant chronicler of important events.   He was the linchpin in persuading Trudeau to change his mind on December 18, 1979 within hours of a press conference when PET had firmly decided to formally announce he would not be running again.  Without that last minute intervention there may have been no Quebec Referendum success, no Charter and no Constitution.   Professor-EmeritusNeville Thompson who had had privileged access to the 30,000 typed pages and 7 million words of the diaries of PM Mackenzie King and author of The Third Man noted that no national leader other than Mackenzie King was so intimate with both Churchill and FDR and indeed knew them better than they knew each other, and no one had such a privileged view of the workings of their relationship of the special relationship between the two leaders.  Churchill and FDR trusted Mackenzie King but had no idea that he was maintaining personal diaries and would not have confided in him as much as they did if they had known.  Thompson shared fascinating inside stories that would have never been known but for the diaries of Mackenzie King and spoke of Churchill as a man of destiny who like Coutts arrived at the precise moment in time when history was altered.  If Churchill had been PM in 1938 when the prevailing forces of appeasement were so strong, he  would not have been able to take Britain into the war and Churchill  arrived at the pivotal moment in 1939 when he was needed the most.  During a lively Question and Answer although both Ron and Neville shared their views that diaries should be approached with caution, they expressed their paramount concern that we are at a crisis in Canadian history and our history is in danger.   Diaries and Archives serve an important role in preserving Canadian history and our role in the world.    Society Chair Malliha Wilson presented a donation to Kate Macdonald, Rebekah Bedard and Lindsay Grant who then gave us a private and personal tour of selected items from the Churchill Collection and the Jim Coutts diaries to conclude an interesting and fascinating evening.

--Robert O’Brien