Editing William Lyon Mackenzie King (section)

== Personal style and character ==
King lacked a commanding presence or oratorical skills; he did not shine on the radio or in newsreels. There was scant charisma.<ref>{{cite book|author=Terry Reardon|title=Winston Churchill and Mackenzie King: So Similar, So Different|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CL_x4bfEaIYC&pg=PA381|year=2012|publisher=Dundurn|page=381|isbn=978-1-4597-0590-6}}</ref> Cold and tactless in human relations, he had allies but very few close personal friends. His allies were annoyed by his constant intrigues.<ref name="English">{{cite book |editor-first=John |editor-last1=English |editor-first2=J.O. |editor-last2=Stubbs |title=Mackenzie King: Widening the Debate |date=1977 |publisher=Macmillan of Canada |isbn=0-7705-1529-0}}</ref>

Scholars attribute King's long tenure as party leader to his wide range of skills that were appropriate to Canada's needs.<ref name=autogenerated1>{{cite book|author-link1=H. Blair Neatby |first=H. Blair |last=Neatby |chapter=King and the Historians |editor-last1=English |editor-first=John |editor-last2=Stubbs |editor-first2=J.O. |title=Mackenzie King: Widening the Debate |publisher=Macmillan of Canada  |year=1977}}</ref>
King kept a very candid diary from 1893, when he was still an undergraduate, until a few days before his death in 1950; the volumes, stacked in a row, span a length of over seven metres and comprise over 50,000 manuscript pages of typed transcribed text.<ref name="LAC">{{cite web|title=Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King|url=https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/politics-government/prime-ministers/william-lyon-mackenzie-king/Pages/diaries-william-lyon-mackenzie-king.aspx|website=Library and Archives Canada|date=February 28, 2013|access-date=17 April 2018}}</ref> One biographer called these diaries "the most important single political document in twentieth-century Canadian history,"<ref>{{cite book|ref=Stacey1985|last=Stacey|first=C.P.|author-link=Charles Perry Stacey|title=A Very Double Life: The Private World of Mackenzie King|year=1985|publisher=Formac Publishing|edition=reprint|isbn=0-88780-136-6}}, p. 9</ref> for they explain motivations of the [[Military history of Canada during the Second World War|Canadian war efforts]] and describe other events in detail.

[[File:KingDandurand.jpg|thumb|King and Senator [[Raoul Dandurand]] in state clothing, 1939.]]
[[File:William Lyon Mackenzie King with two dogs - William Mackenzie King avec deux chiens (39107229965).jpg|175px|thumb|left|King with his two dogs, 1938]]
King's [[occult]] interests were kept secret during his years in office,<ref name="mallinos">{{cite journal|last1=Mallinos|first1=Chris|title=For King – and Laurier – and country|journal=Canada's History|date=2018|volume=97|issue=6|pages=70–71|language=en|issn=1920-9894}}</ref> and only became publicized after his death when his diaries were opened. Readers were amazed and for some, King was saddled with the moniker "Weird Willie."<ref>{{cite web|url= https://parli.ca/weird-willie/ |title= Weird Willie|work= The Dictionary of Canadian Politics|publisher= Parli|year= 2021|access-date= 2 April 2021}}</ref> King communed with spirits, using seances with paid mediums. Thereby, he claimed to have communicated with [[Leonardo da Vinci]], [[Wilfrid Laurier]], his dead mother, his grandfather, and several of his dead dogs, as well as the spirit of the late [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt|President Franklin D. Roosevelt]]. Some historians argue that he sought personal reassurance from the spirit world, more than political advice. After his death, one of his mediums said that she had not realized that he was a politician. King did inquire whether his party would win the 1935 election, one of the few times politics came up during his seances. However, Allan Levine argues that sometimes he did pay attention to the political implications of his seances: "All of his spiritualist experiences, his other superstitions and his multi-paranoid reactions imprinted on his consciousness, shaping his thoughts and feelings in a thousand different ways."<ref>{{cite book |first=Allan |last=Levine |title=King: William Lyon Mackenzie King: a Life Guided by the Hand of Destiny |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=co6pBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA14 |year=2011 |publisher=Douglas & McIntyre |location=Vancouver, British Columbia |pages=2–14 |isbn=978-1-55365-560-2}}</ref>

Historians have seen in his [[Spiritualism (movement)|spiritualism]] and occult activities a penchant for forging unities from antitheses, thus having latent political import. Historian [[Charles Perry Stacey|C.P. Stacey]], in his 1976 book ''A Very Double Life'' examined King's secret life in detail, argued that King did not allow his beliefs to influence his decisions on political matters. Stacey wrote that King entirely gave up his interests in the occult and spiritualism during World War II.<ref name="Stacey 1976">[[#Stacey1976|Stacey (1976)]]</ref> In his two-volume biography ''The Spiritualist Prime Minister: Mackenzie King and the New Revelation'' and ''The Spiritualist Prime Minister: Mackenzie King and His Mediums'', Anton Wagner documents that King maintained his spiritualist beliefs and occult practices until his death in 1950. Wagner maintains that King’s spiritualism contributed to his political achievements as Canada’s longest serving Prime Minister.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wagner |first=Anton |title=The Spiritualist Prime Minister: Vol. 1, Mackenzie King and the New Revelation; Vol. 2; Mackenzie King and His Mediums |publisher=White Crow Books in association with the Survival Research Institute of Canada |year=2024 |isbn= |location=Guildford, Surrey, UK}}</ref>

King never married,<ref name="mallinos" /> but had several close female friends, including Joan Patteson, a married woman with whom he spent some of his leisure time; sometimes she served as hostess at his dinner parties.<ref>{{cite book |first=Allan |last=Levine |title=Scrum Wars: The Prime Ministers and the Media |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0yz-rrDVKkYC&pg=PA134 |year=1996 |publisher=Dundurn |location=Toronto, Ontario |page=134 |isbn=978-1-55488-289-2 |access-date=July 20, 2015}}</ref> He did not have a wife who could be the hostess all the time and handle the many social obligations that he tried to downplay. Editor Charles Bowman reports that, "He felt the lack of a wife, particularly when social duties called for a hostess."<ref>{{cite book |first=Charles A. |last=Bowman|title=Ottawa Editor: The Memoirs of Charles A. Bowman |url=https://archive.org/details/ottawaeditormemo0000bowm |url-access=registration |year=1966 |publisher=Gray's Pub.}}</ref>

Some historians have interpreted passages in his diaries as suggesting that King regularly had sexual relations with prostitutes.<ref>[[#Stacey1985|Stacey (1985)]]</ref> Others, also basing their claims on passages of his diaries, have suggested that King was in love with [[Lord Tweedsmuir]], whom he had chosen for appointment as [[Governor General]] in 1935.<ref>{{cite video |last1=Jarvis |first1=Ian  |last2=Collins |first2=David |date=1992 |title=Willie: Canada's Bachelor Prime Minister |publisher=Butterfly Productions |location=Toronto, Ontario }}</ref>