Daniel Mowatt was a merchant and political figure in Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan

Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

, Canada. He represented South Regina in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories from 1891 to 1898 as a Conservative.

He was born in Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

, Canada West, the son of Alex Mowat, of Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 descent. In 1871, he married Amelia M. Hoy. Mowat was a member of the Ottawa public school board. He came to the Northwest Territories

Northwest Territories

The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...

 in 1880 and opened the first store in Regina in 1882. Mowat served on the Regina town council and was mayor from 1886 to 1887. With his brother Alex, also a partner in the Regina store, Mowat owned a large horse ranch near the current village of Avonlea

Avonlea, Saskatchewan

Avonlea is a village in south-central Saskatchewan, Canada, approximately 60 km southwest of Regina.- Demographics :History of the area can be found at ....

.

While a member of the assembly, Mowat proposed that English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 be the sole language of instruction in schools in the Northwest Territories. A compromise was reached that allowed a course in French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

at the primary level.