John A. Macdonald's known drinking problems, with binges bracketing long spells of sobriety and very hard work, meant that he was unusual among Canadian public figures in not being able fully to separate his private and public lives. His escapades, which also included losing his temper to the point of threatening fisticuffs and issuing a challenge to a duel, have created the notion of him as an anachronism or throwback in the increasingly puritanical Victorian era.
On a closer look, Macdonald appears to have been a more staid Victorian than the image allows. There were no mistresses or even rumours of affairs during his marriages. He was a loving husband and father (one son from his first marriage, a handicapped daughter from his second) and, particularly in the later years, he cut back substantially on his drinking. It would not be said that the old chieftain was an alcoholic. Not deeply religious, he nonetheless practiced the forms of his faith and believed in the importance of following the proprieties. "Forms are things," he often said, and expected high standards of correctness from his secretaries.
Michael Bliss, Right Honourable Men (1994), p. 27.
