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OTTAWA - No more pencils, no more books, no more opponents' dirty looks.
The prime minister of Canada is going on holiday.
Stephen Harper will head to Alberta later this week to visit family and attend the Calgary Stampede. After that, he and his family will retire to Harrington Lake, the official country residence of the prime minister.
What he'll get there is a luxury not afforded to his counterpart in the U.S. — privacy.
While a travelling press corps dogs the American president everywhere he goes, the down time of Canada's prime ministers doesn't get any air time.
"We might know where he is generally but we don't have a 24-hour attachment to the office," said Andrew Cohen, president of Historica-Dominion institute of Canadian history.
"The Americans do."
While the official retreat for the U.S. president, Camp David, essentially functions as a second White House, Harrington Lake is a much smaller operation.
The 5.4-hectare property is about 30 kilometres outside of Ottawa. It came into government possession in 1951, as the federal government was buying up land in the process of putting together Gatineau Park.
But the first prime minister to call it home was John Diefenbaker in 1959. He was convinced, the story goes, to make it a summer house by a caretaker who took him fishing.
Most prime ministers have used it for short weekend getaways or a relaxed place for meetings, as opposed to a full vacation spot.
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney infamously hosted German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber there in June of 1993, a meeting that eventually led to a multimillion-dollar investigation and inquiry into their relationship.
When Paul Martin went on holiday as prime minister, he would go to his family farm in Quebec's Eastern Townships, while Pierre Trudeau often liked to travel abroad.
On the Queen's recent visit to Canada, Harper accompanied her almost everywhere she went. But when she was here in 1978, Trudeau, then prime minister, was on vacation in Monaco.
While Jean Chretien was famous for his little cabin in Shawinigan, a series published in the in the Toronto Star in 2003 showed the former prime minister also liked Disney World and Morocco, where he'd sometimes set up a shadow prime ministers' office.
"Sometimes I am at home, and sometimes at the lake," Chrétien told reporters in 2002. "You don't know where I am."
That same attitude would never fly in the U.S.
Where presidents vacation is part of their story, said Gil Troy, a professor of American history at McGill University in Montreal.
Most U.S. presidents have a private summer home they use for vacation. George W. Bush had both his ranch in Texas and a home in Maine. The Kennedys had the famous Hyannis Port.
"There are definite dynamics connected to vacationing," Troy said.
"Ronald Reagan was the oldest man ever elected president and he had to show that he was vacationing, not doddering."
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, who didn't have a second home, rented a house in tony Martha's Vineyard, an island off Cape Cod.
But in the summer of 1996, worried that people would think the vineyard was too elitist, Clinton commissioned a poll to ask the nation where he should go on vacation.
The answer was camping.
"I think there is a danger when you are a leader of that stature, either a president or prime minister, of being seen to be away from the job for too long," said Cohen.
"There will always be someone who will say to you: how can you go on holiday when you have unemployed people? How can you go on holiday when interest rates are high? How can you go on holiday when there are soldiers fighting in Afghanistan?"
But family dynamics help some leaders, says Troy.
Both current U.S. President Barack Obama and Harper have young children, and there's more latitude from the public about giving them a break.
A picture taken of Harper on his holidays last summer shows him catching frogs with his daughter Rachel.
In an interview last year, Trudeau's son Justin recounted that one of his fondest memories was driving up to Harrington Lake in his father's two-seater convertible.
Since Harper's family home is in Alberta, taking his summer holidays at Harrington keeps him closer to the office.
Harper has a policy of not taking vacations outside the country but those around him note he's not much for holidays anyway.
When the opposition accused Harper of proroguing Parliament in the winter to get a vacation, it was he who had the last laugh.
The week after New Year's, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was in Europe, and NDP Leader Jack Layton was in Belize.
Harper was at his desk in Ottawa.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/1007 ... er_holiday
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