Of the hundreds of banquets that I have attended, none were more enjoyable than those of the Parliamentary Press Gallery at Ottawa, which were always held on a Saturday night. There good fellowship, genial companionship and mirth, both in wit and humor, held unbroken sway until midnight when it was run on Winnipeg time and then on Vancouver time, so that we wouldn’t break the Sabbath. The big men spoke freely and so did some of us littler fellows, and seldom was there a tiresome spell, for the speeches were, by an unwritten law, always brief and to the point. These were before the dark days of the Big War and prohibition. They were held from 1870 to 1914, when they ceased altogether during the conflict, and have not been resumed since.
Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Sir Charles Tupper, Sir John Carling, Sir George Foster frequently were honored guests, and such senators and commoners as Nicholas Flood Davin, Dr. Landerkin, George Casey, Sir Sam Hughes, Hon. R. Lemieux, Col. E. J. Chambers, Col. Smith, Dr. Sproule, Ed. Macdonald, Senator George Fowler, Hon. Geo. P. Graham, Hon. R. F. Sutherland, Charlie Parmalee, Harry Charlton of the Grand Trunk, John P. Knight, Tom Daly, M.P., E. G. Prior, M.P., Robt. S. White. M.P., James Somerville, M.P., J. J. Curran, M.P., and a host of others gladly accepted the highly coveted invitation. My first appearance at one of these was in 1886. The gathering was a comparatively small one, but still very respectable. John T. Hawke, of the Ottawa _Free Press_ and for years subsequently publisher of the Moncton _Transcript_, was assigned the reply to the toast of “The Conservative Party” and R. S. White that to the toast of “The Liberal Party.” The joke consisted in the fact that Mr. White was about as hard shell a Tory in those days as Mr. Hawke was an adamant Grit. Mr. White treated his subject humorously, reciting as commendable all the faults of the Liberal party, recounting their electoral failures as due to a stupid public, and winding up with the hope that the party which for the nonce he represented might for many years continue to adorn the place they held in the Commons. The Liberals then were in a hopeless minority. Mr. Hawke was nonplussed by the line Mr. White had taken and his attack on the Conservative party fell somewhat flat. He had missed the joke of entrusting him with the toast.