Ugly John is a novel based on the life and times of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, who was born in Glasgow in 1815 and died in Ottawa in 1891. It loosely follows a chronological structure, exploring Macdonald’s youth and adulthood, and the evolution of his personal and political life. 
Macdonald was many things: deeply ambitious, doggedly loyal to the British Empire, a joker, a wit, a flamboyant dresser and a very heavy drinker. He was also shrewdly self-serving. A case in point, he endorsed giving the vote to women, First Nations men, and African-Canadian men as long as they owned property, a position more about earning him votes than in service to the principle of universal suffrage. Ugly John is neither a condemnation of this most notoriously controversial figure nor an exoneration; rather, it is a humorous evocation and process of discovery.