Olive Diefenbaker

Who was Olive Diefenbaker?

Olive Evangeline Freeman Palmer Diefenbaker was the second wife of John George Diefenbaker, the 13th Prime Minister of Canada.

Olive Palmer was born in 1902 in Roland, Manitoba. John Diefenbaker proposed to Olive Palmer in Paddockwood, Saskatchewan while she was a school teacher. John Diefenbaker and Olive Freeman Palmer married on December 8, 1953. They had no children but 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.