Olive Diefenbaker

Olive Evangeline Diefenbaker ( Freeman; April 14, 1902 – December 22, 1976) was the second wife of John Diefenbaker, the 13th Prime Minister of Canada. Diefenbaker proposed to her in Paddockwood, Saskatchewan, while she was a school teacher, and they were married on December 8, 1953. They had no children together, but they raised a daughter from her previous marriage to Toronto solicitor Harry Palmer, who died less than three years after the birth of the child. On her husband's death in 1979, her remains, buried in 1976 in Ottawa, were reburied in Saskatoon in 1979. Life Olive was born to two Nova Scotian parents. Her father was a Baptist Minister from Canning, Nova Scotia. Due to her father's occupation she grew up moving around the Canadian Prairies. Olive first met her second husband John Diefenbaker in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan at a church where her father was working. John had just gotten back from fighting in World War I and was studying law at this time. She attended McMaster University and the Ontario College of Education and in 1933 she started her career as a high school teacher. She taught French at the Guelph Collegiate Vocational Institute in Ontario. She wore a steel back brace due to several slipped disks. She met her first husband Harry Palmer during 1933. He was a Toronto Barrister and lawyer. He later died in 1936 after three years of marriage and one child. During her marriage to Harry, she stepped away from her profession but after his untimely death she started a new career as the director of child guidance for the Ontario Department of Education. Olive reunited with John Diefenbaker in 1951 and they married in 1953 in Toronto. Diefenbaker's first wife, Edna Brower, had died in 1951. Olive Freeman was born in 1902 in Roland, Manitoba.