Neil Sutherland, review of Robin Fisher, Duff Pattullo of British Columbia, BC Studies 94 (Summer 1992), pp. 92-95

Read 12 Oct 2026. A review of the biography (Robin Fisher, Duff Pattullo of British Columbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991): "Dawson City, Yukon" and "The Decline of Reform" (in part)) that quotes Fisher's judgments with their pages.

• Fisher's claims, as quoted: of McBride, Oliver, Pattullo and W. A. C. Bennett, "Pattullo was the most significant" (p. ix); "Pattullo believed in an interventionist state and his government would be arguably the most active in Canada during the 1930s" (p. 248); after 1937 "much of the reformist heat had gone out" (p. 299); King's diary, "the most absurd ideas about the extent to which public monies should be spent at this time" (p. 286).
• Sutherland's own view: "We see Pattullo as an extremely able Minister of Lands"; Fisher "carefully recreates Pattullo's masterly effort at rebuilding his party after its defeat in the 1928 election"; Pattullo's requests to Ottawa were sensible; but Fisher "makes no case for this evaluation" (the "most significant" premier). Citing Bill Asselstine, a minister under both Pattullo and Hart, he sees in Pattullo and Bennett a similar vision of public works: "Bennett must take first place and a Pattullo a respectable second."

See Duff Pattullo, 22nd Premier of British Columbia: what did he get right, and what did he get wrong?.