G. Resignation
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When he returned to Canada, Borden tried to recover some support in Qu bec for his government, which had done little in the past year. It had completed the nationalization of the railways and had passed an act for the deportation of anarchists. Borden made a speaking tour, and even offered to resign if it might help the party. His offer was refused, but he was already considering resigning for other reasons. Borden was in ill health.
Most of the cabinet wanted Sir Thomas White as Borden’s successor. White, however, who had been the wartime minister of finance, had decided to retire. Sir Clifford Sifton and Borden himself wanted the younger and more capable Arthur Meighen. Borden thought he should ask White first, but he was relieved when his former minister declined the offer. Borden resigned on July 10, 1920, and Meighen was appointed to succeed him.
IV. Further Service
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Borden’s resignation did not mean that he had retired from national and international affairs. He regained his health and represented Britain at the Washington Conference in 1921 and 1922, and at the arbitration between Britain and Peru that took place in Paris in 1922. He represented Canada on the Council of the League of Nations, and was Canada’s chief delegate at the League’s 1930 assembly. Borden delivered lectures at the University of Toronto and at the University of Oxford. The Toronto lectures were published in 1921 as Canadian Constitutional Studies. The Oxford lectures were published in 1929 as Canada in the Commonwealth. In 1912 Borden was sworn in as a member of the imperial Privy Council. He was chancellor of McGill University from 1918 to 1920 and of Queen’s University at Kingston from 1924 to 1930. Borden died in 1937, and his Memoirs were published posthumously the following year.