Canada's first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald (1815-91) had a forty-seven year career in Parliament that permanently shaped the course of Canadian political life. Sir John A.; An Anecdotal Life of John A. Macdonald gives us the man behind the legend. Lively and revealing anecdotes about Sir John A.'s political and parliamentary life are set against stories of his private joys and sorrows-the death of his brother at the hands of a drunken servant; his rebellious youth; the illness of his beautiful first wife, and her addiction to opium; his courtship and second marriage; the tragedy of his only daughter, born with hydrocephalus; his womanizing; and his life-long battle with alcohol. Stories of patronage, of political campaigns, of loyal supporters and bitter opponents take readers through many of the major events of the nineteenth-century Canada, from the building of the CPR to the Riel Rebellions, to name only a few.