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- I find it difficult to tell stories
about people sometimes,

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but today's guest has no such problem.

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I first met Evan Hadfield
on a trip to the Arctic.

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He is a man who somehow has the ability
to de-escalate any argument.

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Or maybe all Canadians can do that,
I don't know.

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His channel is called Rare Earth, and he
travels the world telling human stories.

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Evan, it's all yours.

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- On Rare Earth, we like to take symbols from
a country that maybe you've not been to yet

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and show how they fit into the bigger
picture of your own life.

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And because Tom caught me at home,
I want to do this on my country, on Canada.

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And more specifically I want to do it

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on a sexually repressed, hypocritical,
guilt-ridden, prostitute-visiting mama's boy,

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our 10th Prime Minister.

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He's a good example of
how you don't have to be

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great at being a person
to be a great politician.

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What drives someone to
become a politician?

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To me it always seemed
like such a terrible job.

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Nobody likes you, and it really doesn't
  make as much money as it seems.

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There isn't even really
that much power in it.

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It's kind of like being
a dentist with bad pay.

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But there is something
you get as a politician

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that you can get unlike
almost anywhere else,

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and that's a legacy.

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Canada's wartime prime minister
is not a man we all remember fondly.

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He wrote his Ph.D. thesis
on how Asian people

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would never be able to
integrate into other societies

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only to then watch them
integrate into his society.

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Even though he was our wartime prime minister
and he hated the Nazis,

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because of his love of the occult,
he kinda felt like this Adolf guy

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might be the one to lead Germany to glory.

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A lifetime bachelor whose
only sexual relations

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came from prostitutes that
he then beat himself up over,

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he regularly took advice from
the ghost of his dead mother,

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and potentially even that of his dead dog.

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There's some other stuff too,
but you get the picture.

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That's our most successful guy.

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William Lyon Mackenzie King.

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He's dead now.

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Everyone in this story is dead now.

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Except me, I guess, depending
on when you watch this.

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But at one point he was Canada's
longest serving prime minister.

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He ran the country through the Depression
and the Second World War.

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FDR was President for 12 years, but
Mackenzie King was Prime Minister for 21.

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And he would have been elected again
had he not aged out.

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By any definition,
he was an incredibly successful politician.

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And that's the heart of this.

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I'm not gonna bore you
with his economic plan,

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I'm not even gonna click-bait you
with his racism and blind eye towards Hitler,

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because neither of those were truly
 the purpose behind King's civil service.

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They weren't why he became a politician.

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What I want to  talk to you about
is the driving force of legacy

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and the value of being weird.

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Now, I know what you're thinking.
Weird isn't a very concise term.

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There is no scientific
definition of weird.

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This is Tom Scott's channel
and "weird"  simply won't do.

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But he was.

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Pretty much everybody who knew him agreed
to the point that his nickname was Weird Willy.

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He was a firm believer in the occult,

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going so far as to study his shaving cream
for political omens.

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Churchill and Roosevelt
clearly couldn't stand him

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even though he'd done virtually
everything they'd asked.

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In pictures they look strained
 just to be around him.

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Which makes sense:

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he was a generally
uncomfortable guy to be around.

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Between his Norman Bates-style
relationship with his mother

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and his constantly replacing dead dogs named Pat
with live dogs named Pat,

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he built a name in Ottawa
as one of Canada's most eccentric men.

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But despite his faults, King
was a political mastermind.

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The voting public didn't really
care about his personality,

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so long as the war, economy,
and Quebec were all managed well.

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What they wanted was Canada's promise
of peace, prosperity, and good government.

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And King could provide it.

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In spite of his faults, no one would deny
that in a time of incredibly basic polling,

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he always somehow seemed to understand
the will of the people.

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But I supposed he was
built a bit differently,

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after all, government is rarely a first choice,
but for King it was a calling.

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He believed that his dreams were visions,
and he followed them.

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To him his life's divine purpose
was to restore his family legacy.

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And if it took ruling the
entire country to do so,

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that's what he was gonna do.

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From a young age King was obsessed
with his famous grandfather,

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also named William Lyon Mackenzie,
just without the King,

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which is in itself a joke
because his defining moment came

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in trying to free Canada
from the monarchy.

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So, you know, no King
in the name?... you get it.

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In the mid-1800s with Mackenzie
as the mayor of Toronto,

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rebels hiding out in the
US declared themselves

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the Republic of Canada, and invaded it.

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Their intent was overthrowing British rule
in favour of an independent state,

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or, depending on how the
Québécois fared, states.

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Once free of British tyranny, these states
would presumably be gobbled up

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by their neighbour to the south,

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but it wasn't to be.
Britain won.

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William Lyon Mackenzie's memory, and the
Republic he stood for,  died with little fanfare.

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He remained in public life
but was essentially forgotten.

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It's possible he'd remain that way to this day
if not for his grandson.

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At his grandfather's graveside in Toronto, that weird occult mama's boy

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began a journey that would redefine this country.

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It would redefine the legacy
his ancestor left behind.

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Sure, it wasn't yet a fire, but his grandfather's rebellion
had sparked something in Canada.

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Soon afterwards we'd be voting
for our own prime minister.

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King would be the 10th.

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And really his timing was perfect.

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It would be an American century
and it didn't take a fortune teller to see that.

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Canadians had been warming to the idea
of a new mother country,

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a new empire to bow to.

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At the turn of the 20th century, the Republican ideals

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that had driven those rebels less than 100 years before
were stronger than ever.

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Having been dragged head first
into World War I without a vote,

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devastated by indifferent
British generals,

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Canada was ready to change best friends.

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We may have won the war, but Britain
had asked us to give everything for her,

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everything,

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for a war that meant nothing.

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In a population of under eight million,
over half a million of us went to Europe.

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My family died in Europe.

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The next time we'd vote,
we had a leader who wasn't afraid

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to say no to Britain,
to say no to conscription.

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We'd never be forced into
war without a vote again,

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not for Britain, not for
our new friend America.

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Mother could no longer come calling.

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To the people, that
right had died in Ypres.

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But to Mackenzie King, it
died with his grandfather.

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Those days were over.

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Whether it was through his own backbone
or the will of his voters,

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King led us into a new era.

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He saw himself not as a person
but as a vessel for legacy,

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and in turn we voted for him,

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not as a person,
but as a vessel for legacy,

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just ours, not his.

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William Lyon Mackenzie King
was not a good person.

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He wasn't even really good
at being a person.

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He was weird, nobody liked him,
and he died alone.

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But he changed this country's future

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because there's one thing you can get as a politician

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unlike anywhere else,
even if you're weird,

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and that's a legacy.

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And that's the point of today's episode.

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The drive that leads us to glory.

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Maybe it was just a case
of 'right place, right time',

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perhaps he was little more than an expression
of the changing national mood.

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I'm certainly not saying
that the key to good politics

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is poor behaviour or acting strangely,

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but it worked in its time.

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When you strip everything away,
Mackenzie King's grandfather wanted

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Canada and the United States
to be friends.

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A strange man sacrificed
his whole life towards personal ends,

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and as a result, here we are: friends.

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A weirdo may have led us there,
but it doesn't really matter who he was,

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and he knew that,

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because the legacy remains.

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Thanks for listening, everybody.

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This is Rare Earth.

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- Seasons One and Two of Rare Earth
are online now from Japan and Cambodia.

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And Evan is working
on Season Three right now.

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So, go watch and go subscribe.

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I would recommend starting with his video
about the Last Elephants of Cambodia.

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And that's it.
That's this run of guest videos.

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Unless disaster has struck,
I will see you next week.