The great Canadian Liberal statesman Edward Blake was a socially awkward man renowned for his prim Victorian morality. "I looked at his shirtfront and then at his face," a colleague remarked after seeing Blake at a banquet, "and concluded that it didn't matter which I looked at as they were both starched and ironed."
[Blake's stuffy debating style was once parodied thus: "If you believe me, what need is there for explanations? And if you do not believe me you stand condemned."]
Sources
Douglas Fetherling, Broadview Book of Canadian Anecdotes
