Mackenzie King, of course, had this rock garden out at Kingsmere. If a bank was being torn down and it had great old stone windows, he would buy them and he would take them over there, put them up, and you can still go and see these things.
Well during the Battle of Britain one night, the man at the night desk at Canada House phones Pearson and says, "There's a message in code here from the Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, and you better come in and get it." This was two or three in the morning. Pearson says, "Well, can't it wait until the morning?" And this guy says, "No!" He says, "The instructions are to get you up and you are to come over here and get this. I'm sorry to bother you, sir, but this is what it says and it's from Mackenzie King."
So Pearson gets dressed, he heads over there in a cab. He was kind of frustrated about this, but I guess the thing has been decoded by some cipher clerk and he reads it. What it is, is that the Parliament buildings had been bombed that night and he's to get a truck or a couple of cabs and go over and get all the rocks that he can from Westminister and crate them and ship them back to Mackenzie King. And I guess he was uttering oaths the whole time he did it, and was not very pleased about it. But he actually did it.
He used to...until the day he died, I think, he told that story. Whenever he'd talk about Mackenzie King, that'd be the first story.
