...Edna acted as John's unpaid assistant, sat above him in the members' gallery, and spread her network of friendship and information-gathering quickly into the press gallery and across to the government benches. The journalist Patrick Nicholson recalled that Edna's "radiance...bubbling with joie de vivre" brought light to John's "gloomily barren little back-bencher's office on the fifth floor of the Parliament Building." The Diefenbakers' close political partnership was unusual in Ottawa, and Edna's enthusiastic support for her husband did much to cement his valuable attachments in the press gallery....
...Olive Diefenbaker, like Edna, was a supporter and protector of her husband -- although in very different ways. Where Edna had softened his stiffness and self-importance, and eased his relations with clients, voters, the press, and politicians, Olive sustained him with her complete loyalty, dignity, strong will, and sense of propriety. Edna had encouraged John's mischievous and irreverent side, as did some of his secretaries, but Olive did not. She was "a stern Baptist" and a teetotaller who took herself seriously and lacked her husband's impish sense of fun. She was not, like Edna, simply resigned to John's ambition. She joined him late in his career, helped to revive it, and dedicated herself to its fulfillment. She reinforced his grievances, his suspicions, and his sense of destiny. She was a formidable aide to her husband for the rest of her life. John was devoted to her -- perhaps even intimidated by her -- and as sensitive to her pride as to his own....
Denis Smith, Rogue Tory The Life and Legend of John G. Diefenbaker (Macfarlane Walter & Ross: 1995), pp. 111-112; p. 196.
