John Edward Brownlee
Encyclopedia
John Edward Brownlee was the fifth Premier of Alberta
, Canada, serving from 1925 until 1934. Born in Port Ryerse, Ontario
, he studied history and political science at the University of Toronto
's Victoria College
before moving west to Calgary
to become a lawyer. His clients included the United Farmers of Alberta
(UFA); through his connection with that lobby group, he was involved in founding the United Grain Growers
(UGG).
After the UFA entered electoral politics and won the 1921 election
, new premier Herbert Greenfield
asked Brownlee to serve as his attorney-general. Brownlee agreed, and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
in a by-election
in the riding of Ponoka
. As attorney-general, he was an important advisor to Greenfield's government. He was closely involved in its most important activities, including efforts to better the lot of farmers living in Alberta's drought-ridden south, divest itself of money-losing railways, and obtain authority over natural resources from the federal government. When a group of UFA backbenchers grew frustrated with Greenfield's weak leadership, they asked Brownlee to replace him. Brownlee eventually agreed, and became premier in 1925.
Brownlee enjoyed considerable early success as premier: he handily won the 1926 election
, signed an agreement with the federal government transferring control over Alberta's natural resources to its provincial government, sold the railways to the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railway companies, and ran a series of balanced budgets. Things became more difficult with the advent of the Great Depression
. Brownlee found himself unable to restore the province to prosperity in the face of a global economic crisis, and reluctantly ran budget deficits. Political radicalism increased, and Brownlee found his orthodox approach to political economy attacked from multiple sides.
In 1934, Brownlee was sued for seduction by Vivian MacMillan, a family friend. The jury in the trial found in MacMillan's favour. Though the judge disregarded the jury's verdict, the trial's lurid testimony and the stigma resulting from the jury's finding forced Brownlee's resignation as premier. He was subsequently defeated in his re-election bid in Ponoka, as William Aberhart
's new Social Credit League
swept the province at the UFA's expense. Once out of politics, Brownlee resumed the practice of law and joined the management of the UGG, serving as its president and general manager from 1948 until shortly before his death in 1961.
, to William "Bill" James Brownlee (1856–1934) and Christina Brownlee (née Shaw) (c. 1860–1941). He was named for his maternal grandfather, miller John Shaw, and paternal grandfather, carpenter Edward James Brownlee. Christina Brownlee was a former school mistress and William James Brownlee was the operator of the Port Ryerse general store. John Brownlee had one sister, Maude, born September 12, 1888. The Brownlees lived in the general store building, and it was here that John spent the happiest times of his childhood: he much preferred his parents' books, their political discussions with neighbours, and the details of their business to life outside the store. One anecdote has the village children, displeased with his serious temperament, throwing him into Lake Erie
. By the age of seven, John was assisting at the store with such tasks as mixing butter
from the different dairies with which his father dealt to produce a standardized blend.
By the end of the 1880s, Port Ryerse was dying out. The advent of railways was making tiny lake ports obsolete, and in Port Ryerse's case this obsolescence was hastened by the town mill burning down in August 1890. Against this backdrop, the family moved to Bradshaw, in Lambton County
. There, John began school and attended Sunday school
at the village's Methodist church. He was the only pupil at his tiny school not from a farm; he later claimed that this experience gave him an early understanding of farmers and their concerns. He also became involved with his church's young people's club, which put on speaking programs. He was by nature shy, serious, and introverted, which made these programs a challenge at first; however, he found that he was able to do well at them through focus and discipline.
In September 1897, Brownlee began high school. The closest high school was in Sarnia
, too distant for a daily commute, so at the age of fourteen Brownlee boarded away from his family, seeing them only during holidays and occasional weekends. He was a good student—described by his instructors as "diligent", if not brilliant—but was not a social success, being too studious for many of his peers. He wrote his departmental examinations in July 1900 and graduated shortly thereafter.
, school law, reading instruction, and hygiene. He graduated December 12, 1901, second in his twenty person class, and within a month was one of two teachers at Bradshaw's school.
He fast gained a reputation as a competent instructor: his old work ethic served him well, and his seriousness, cool blue-grey eyes, and six foot four frame combined to give him an impressive presence. His $400 per year salary did not satisfy his ambition, and in the spring of 1904, after two and a half years on the job, he decided that he wanted a university education. His teaching salary was not sufficient to finance this, so he spent the summer of 1904 selling a one volume encyclopaedia in the newly-settled areas around Rapid City
, Manitoba
. Besides providing him with the income he required—he was a patient, effective salesman and later boasted that he was never thrown off of a farm—the job gave the now 21-year-old Brownlee his first glimpse of Western Canada
. Returning to Ontario at the summer's end, he enrolled at Victoria College
at the University of Toronto
.
and political science
. Besides these chosen foci, he was required to study mathematics
, biology
, English literature
, composition, Latin
, and two additional languages—despite having some knowledge of French
, he chose German
and Hebrew. He continued his trend of diligent scholarship, and earned As in all subjects his first year except for Latin, German, and mathematics, in which he received Bs. The trend continued to his third year, when he was among the top five in his class in all subjects except economics
, in which he was eighth. As he became more involved in extracurricular pursuits, these grades fell; after his fourth and final year, he graduated with III Class Honours, leaving him out of the top tier of students. His professors included historian George Wrong, whom Brownlee held in high esteem.
Brownlee was involved in a wide array of extracurricular pursuits. Chief among these were the Union Literary Society (dubbed "the Lit"), the Acta Victoriana (the college's monthly journal), and "the Bob" (a satirical revue
). The first of these allowed him to hone his skills at formal debate; he earned a reputation as "one of the more effective although not the most dramatic of speakers". In his involvement with the journal, he developed his business skills: in his second year he was named assistant business manager, and he was promoted to business manager in his fourth year. His financial management of Acta Victoriana, along with that of the college glee club
(for which he also served as business manager during his fourth year, organizing a ten day tour of the Niagara region), earned him accolades. For the Bob, Brownlee temporarily abandoned his seriousness to script skits poking fun at the college and his classmates; these won good reviews, with the Acta Victoriana declaring the 1908 edition, which Brownlee headed, "one of the best ever". The summer following his third year, he attended the Conference of College Young Men's Associations at Niagara-on-the-Lake
, where he attended Bible study
classes and heard guest speakers encourage him to pursue a career in the clergy.
Brownlee's summers in university were spent selling stereoscopic viewers in England
and magazine subscriptions in Toronto. He also derived a salary in his fourth year as business manager of the Acta Victoriana. These sources of income allowed him to rent a small room in a private home, and to subscribe to a meal plan at a local eatery for C$2.50 per week.
with a female classmate, Isabella Govenlock. Upon their return, they announced that they were engaged. The news stunned friends of both, none of whom was aware of any previous interest on either's part in the other; moreover, the apparent spontaneity of the engagement seemed at odds with Brownlee's reputation for seriousness and caution. The engagement did not last, and the following winter Brownlee met and began to court Florence Edy, an arts student at McMaster College. During the summer of 1909, Edy moved with her family to Calgary
; Brownlee, for a combination of personal and professional reasons, soon followed. The pair was married December 23, 1912, at the Toronto home of Edy's sister Blanche. A honeymoon trip back to Calgary via Chicago
followed.
Brownlee and his wife had two sons: John Edy Brownlee was born December 1915, and Alan Marshall Brownlee was born September 1917. Florence's pregnancy with Alan, combined with a bout of poor health before it, made her a virtual invalid in subsequent years. This was exacerbated by the 1919 birth and death in infancy of a daughter. The same year, Brownlee visited his family in Ontario; he returned to Alberta with his sister, Maude, who assisted Florence with the care of her children. Soon after, a full-time maid was hired to assist with house keeping.
While John Brownlee relished life in Alberta, Florence missed her friends and family in Ontario. Her health was only made worse by worry about her sons' health: John was perpetually nervous, and Alan was high-strung and sickly. It did not help that, beginning in 1921, her husband spent the work week in Edmonton, commuting home to Calgary only for the weekends. In 1923, the family moved to Edmonton's Garneau region. In 1926, on the way home from a visit east, Florence Brownlee and her sons were examined at the Mayo Clinic
, where all three were given clean bills of health; Florence in particular was advised to "resume a more active life".
Although Brownlee's public image was of a severe and humourless technocrat, in his family life he allowed himself some levity. Christmas morning 1923, the Brownlee boys awoke to find footprints of coal dust leading from the fireplace to the stairs and a handwritten note from Santa Claus
apologizing from the mess and explaining that he had been searching for one of his reindeer
. It transpired that he had mistaken one of Florence's feet, emerging from the covers at the foot of her bed, for an antler. On another occasion, Brownlee reacted to his sons' displeasure at leaving his parents' cat in Ontario by acquiring a large bloodhound
, which he himself came to enjoy.
to the exclusion of law school
. Brownlee and Victoria classmate Fred Albright resolved to go west; after narrowing the choice to either Calgary or Vancouver
, the former was selected on the basis that the legal profession was less established there and that young lawyers without significant capital would be likely to fare better. There, Brownlee was articled with Lougheed, Bennett, Allison & McLaws, whose partners included Sir James Lougheed and R. B. Bennett
. Brownlee became quite close to Bennett; the future Prime Minister often visited him after hours while Brownlee was studying, and use his honed memory and impressive oratorical skills to give the younger man detailed lectures on whatever area of law he was reading about, illustrated by precise and invariably accurate references to cases. Despite his relationship with Bennett, Brownlee was dissatisfied with the work he was being given, and he moved to Muir, Jephson and Adams, where he hoped to practice more commercial law
. There he benefited from the tutelage of James Muir, who spent hours finding precise citations relevant to Brownlee's studies, and then left the casebooks open to the appropriate page for Brownlee to find the next morning.
On December 16, 1912, Brownlee was called to the Alberta Bar
. He began work as an associate with Muir, Jephson and Adams; in 1914 he was made partner. He took advantage of his membership in Victoria College's newly-founded Calgary alumni branch to build professional connections and enjoy edifying conversation. On the outbreak of World War I
, Brownlee did not enlist; his biographer, Lakeland College
historian Franklin Foster, speculates that this may have been because of his eyesight, but notes that he did not involve himself in patriotic fundraising or volunteer work and questions whether he "completely shared the values and ideals of his generation".
, and it was with this group that Brownlee began to work most closely. Among his first tasks for the UFA was to assist with the creation of a province-wide farmer-owned company to own and operate the province's grain elevators. Early in 1913, he was part of a delegation to lobby the provincial government of Arthur Sifton to grant a charter to such a company; Sifton was cognizant of the political power of the UFA, and quickly incorporated the Alberta Farmers' Cooperative Elevator Company (AFCEC) Limited, but refused the farmers' request to guarantee bank loans to the new company. These guarantees were instead received from the Grain Growers Grain Company (GGG), a Manitoba
-based equivalent of the AFCEC.
Brownlee became the AFCEC's lawyer, and in that capacity dealt with lawsuits against the company alleging incompetence on the part of its general manager and fraud on the part of a former auditor. His most important work for the AFCEC, however, was in merging it with the GGG to form the United Grain Growers
(UGG). In 1916, new AFCEC president Cecil Rice-Jones began to advocate the amalgamation of western Canada's farmer-controlled grain elevator companies. Saskatchewan
's farmers were uninterested, leaving the AFCEC and the GGG as the two potential partners. After accompanying Rice-Jones to a meeting with Alberta Public Works Minister Charles Stewart
, Brownlee initially found himself in agreement with Stewart's belief that the companies' shareholders would not accept amalgamation, and that a holding company
should instead be created to run both companies' affairs. After further study, however, he changed his mind and pursued the amalgamation with his typical focus. He reviewed the two companies' corporate charters, and found that the GGG's prevented it from either selling out to another company or acquiring sufficient capitalization to buy out the AFCEC. The charter could only be amended by the Parliament of Canada
, and the GGG was concerned that any request for amendments would lead eastern Canadian financial interests to successfully lobby for a weakening of farmers' rights. A meeting of both companies' boards at the GGG's Winnipeg
offices nevertheless reached the reluctant conclusion that this route was necessary for amalgamation. Though Brownlee continued to fear resistance from the shareholders, both companies' annual general meeting
s approved the proposal. Brownlee was heavily involved at both meetings, fielding questions from shareholders about legal ramifications and serving on ad hoc subcommittees to study aspects of the proposal. Once the proposal was approved, he drew up the necessary agreements, bylaws, stock certificates, and other instruments. The UGG came into existence September 1, 1917.
As lawyer for the UGG, Brownlee began to sympathize with the prevailing farmers' view that the eastern Canadian business establishment was hostile to their interests; for example, when UGG wanted to sell twine
, no manufacturer would supply it. He recommended that the UGG reduce farmers' reliance on the eastern establishment by expanding its operations into insurance
, investment
, and real estate
. The result was the United Grain Growers Securities Ltd. He also helped the UGG quietly sell the stock it held in the Home Bank
when UGG directors began to doubt the bank's soundness; this subtlety was considered essential, as the directors were concerned that airing their doubts publicly would make the bank's failure a self-fulfilling prophecy
. When UGG Assistant General Manager J. R. Murray found an interested buyer, Brownlee advised Murray against insisting on an intricate written sales contract for fear that the buyer would sense the directors' concerns. His advice was heeded, and the sale was concluded December 29, 1919.
In July 1919 Brownlee left Muir, Jephson and Adams to accept a full-time position with the UGG at $6,000 per year. Several months later this was increased to $7,500 in view of his increased responsibilities as General Manager of UGG Securities. In 1922, he was made King's Counsel. Brownlee was doing well in both law and business, and expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.
, Irene Parlby
, Herbert Greenfield
, and, most importantly, Henry Wise Wood
. The charismatic Wood was the UFA's president, and Brownlee often accompanied him to speaking engagements at UFA locals across Alberta in 1919 and 1920. Wood held meetings enraptured with his sermons on cooperation and social justice—Brownlee at one point likened the UFA to a religion—while Brownlee explained the services offered by the UFA's central office and answered members' legal questions. His trips with Wood aroused Brownlee's interest, and he began to study in greater detail the political side of the farmers' movement.
Another of Brownlee's contacts was T. A. Crerar
, who had recently become leader of the Progressive Party of Canada
, and it was to him that Brownlee turned for his political education. Crerar introduced Brownlee to Ernest Charles Drury
, the newly-elected United Farmers of Ontario
Premier of Ontario
, and arranged for a meeting between Brownlee and Charles Stewart, by now Alberta Premier. During the latter meeting, Brownlee told Stewart that he felt that the UFA's desires could be accommodated within Stewart's Liberal
government, but warned against a quick election. Foster suggests that this strategic advice from a political neophyte offended Stewart; whether this is true or not, Stewart did call a quick election, for July 1921. The UFA had decided in January 1919, against Woods' wishes, that it would run candidates in the next election.
Before the provincial election, there was a federal by-election scheduled for June 1921 in Medicine Hat. Crerar's Progressives were running Robert Gardiner, a local farmer, and Crerar asked Wood and Greenfield (the Vice President of the UFA) to broker an alliance between farmers and labour
in the mixed rural-urban riding. Before these efforts could come to fruition, the federal government of Conservative
Arthur Meighen
disclosed allegations of irregularities in the management of the some of the UGG's elevators. At a hearing on June 4, former employees testified of storage bins with false bottoms and bribed railway employees. These allegations regarded events from 1912 until 1914, and their sudden prominence in 1921 made some in the UFA suspect that the hearings were politically motivated. Brownlee, as the UGG's attorney, was successful in obtaining an injunction
against further hearings until the UGG had time to conduct its own investigation and, as importantly, until the Medicine Hat by-election was over. Gardiner won by a wide margin.
While most of the UFA was gearing up for the 1921 provincial election
, Brownlee went on vacation in Victoria
for a month; despite his recent interest in politics, he still viewed himself as a lawyer and businessman with little role to play in the UFA's electoral activities. Before leaving Calgary, he was assured by Wood that the UFA would not win more than 20 of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
's 61 seats; in fact, it won 38. Brownlee watched the results come in at the offices of the Victoria Colonist.
The UFA, not a political party in the conventional sense, had contested the election without a leader. While its control of the majority of seats in the legislature entitled it, under the conventions of the Westminster parliamentary system, to form the government, it was not clear who would become Premier. Wood was the natural choice, but he declined the job for several reasons. To Brownlee's surprise, Wood proposed that he should become premier instead. Brownlee declined, surmising that many of the newly-elected farmer-politicians would have seen an urban lawyer in the premier's office as a repudiation of much of what they stood for. Ultimately, Greenfield was selected.
. His training in business and law, unique in the UFA caucus, gave him a central role in most of the government's initiatives; he also led the defense against attacks from the Liberal
opposition, and eventually became responsible for setting the agenda for cabinet meetings.
Brownlee quickly entrenched himself in the conservative wing of the UFA caucus. He resisted measures that would take decision-making out of government departments and transfer them to the caucus or UFA locals, and opposed the efforts of some UFA backbenchers to transform the application of the Westminster
system in Alberta. When the UFA's more radical elements called for the creation of a government-owned bank, Brownlee dismissed the idea as neither financially nor constitutionally feasible. His concern for the government's finances extended to its budget deficit; when he found Greenfield's spending cuts wanting, he cut staff from his own department to set an example. In a further attempt to better the government's financial position, he unsuccessfully advocated the sale of the its four money-losing railways to Canadian National (CPR) or Canadian Pacific (CPR).
A longstanding objective of the Alberta government had been winning control of Alberta's lands and natural resources from the federal government. The older provinces already had this control, but when Alberta, Saskatchewan
, and Manitoba
were admitted to Confederation, the federal government retained resource rights and paid the provincial governments an annual grant as compensation. As attorney-general, Brownlee was Alberta's chief negotiator in these efforts, and met frequently with representatives of Liberal
Prime Minister
William Lyon Mackenzie King
. While negotiations occasionally seemed promising, King was unwilling to fully commit to the transfer, possibly because Charles Stewart, now King's Alberta lieutenant, and John R. Boyle
, leader of the provincial Liberals, were sworn enemies of the UFA.
As a farmers' government, the UFA was committed to helping farmers in the province's drought-stricken south. Brownlee authored the Drought Relief Act, which created a Drought Relief Commissioner to provide farmers with financial counselling and help them reach settlements with banks when they were unable to pay their debts. He also played a leading role in the creation of the Alberta Wheat Pool
.
Brownlee's department was responsible for administration of prohibition
. Though the policy initially enjoyed the support of most Albertans, disregard for it was sufficiently widespread that effective enforcement proved impossible. The 1922 murder of Alberta Provincial Police
constable Steve Lawson by bootleggers Emil Picariello and Florence Lassandro helped turn public opinion against it, and it was repealed the next year. The Lord's Day Act, which prohibited most commerce on Sundays, was also Brownlee's responsibility, though he had little enthusiasm for it and prosecuted only the most flagrant violations.
Many UFA MLAs came to see the government's reliance on Brownlee as embarrassing, and Greenfield's abilities as too limited to continue to lead. In 1924, they pressured Greenfield to resign so Brownlee could replace him; Brownlee scuppered the plot by warning that Greenfield's resignation would be accompanied by his own. A second attempt in 1925 was successful when Wood intervened to convince Brownlee to accept the premiership and Greenfield assured him that he would be pleased to be rid of it. Brownlee became Premier of Alberta November 23, 1925.
, an increase from the 38 that the UFA had won in 1921 and enough for a majority in the 60-seat legislature.
Once returned to office, Brownlee turned his attention to his other priorities. Many of them required the cooperation of King's Liberal federal government: provincial control of resources would require the acquiescence of the federal government, and Brownlee felt that the deficit was in part the result of the federal government's failure to cover its rightful share of expenses. King was himself reliant on the UFA: his minority government
was survived thank to the support of Progressives and allied factions, including the 11 UFA MPs. Though some UFA legislators preferred Arthur Meighen's Conservatives, Brownlee personally supported the King government, and even appeared to consider an offer from the Prime Minister to take Brownlee into his cabinet.
Brownlee attempted to leverage his relationship with King to win provincial control of natural resources. He won such an agreement in 1926, but it was soon scuttled by the federal addition of a clause requiring Alberta to continue supporting separate Roman Catholic schools. Wrangling over this clause persisted until 1929, when a compromise was reached. All that remained was the question of compensation to Alberta for land given away by the federal government, and by the end of 1929 agreement on this too was reached. Brownlee returned from Ottawa to Alberta, where he was greeted by 3,000 cheering supporters.
Brownlee was similarly successful in divesting the government of its railways. When his initial attempts to sell them to the CNR or CPR failed, the provincial government took over direct operation of the lines in 1927. In 1928, they began to show a profit, and one of the lines was soon sold to the CPR. A joint offer from the CPR and CNR for the remaining lines was judged too low, and they were sold to the CPR near the end of 1928 for $25 million.
Control of natural resources and the divestment of the railways were two factors that permitted balanced provincial budgets, the first of which was registered in 1925. Despite this success, Brownlee continued to advocate austerity, and tried unsuccessfully to persuade the federal government to assume a greater share of the costs of new social programs, such as the old age pension. His resulting reputation as a penny-pincher came at a cost to his personal popularity.
Brownlee's government also attempted to advance a progressive
agenda. One way this manifested itself was an attempt to consolidate Alberta's thousands of school districts into a far smaller number of school divisions. The plan was supported by educational reformers who believed that the decentralized status quo made province-wide reform impossible, but was scrapped when rural residents expressed fears that it would mean the closure of local schools. Another progressive initiative was the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta
, which allowed for the sterilization
of "mental defectives". While the act, repealed in 1972, is now viewed as barbaric, at the time it enjoyed the support of moral reformers like Nellie McClung
, who believed it was for the subjects' own protection.
, and was rewarded with a slightly diminished majority. However, the Great Depression
was already making itself felt in Alberta. The price of wheat
, Alberta's major export, declined from a high of $1.78 per bushel in the summer of 1929, to $1.00 in the following March, to $0.45 by the end of 1930. The Alberta Wheat Pool
(AWP) guaranteed its members a minimum price of $1.00 per bushel (itself not enough for many farmers to earn a living), and it found itself facing ruination. Banks denied credit to it and to individual farmers, which in turn made it difficult for the latter to afford seed for the 1931 crop. The provincial government faced calls to provide loan guarantees. Brownlee was concerned that such guarantees would encourage lenders to make loans at higher interest rates, with the knowledge that the provincial government would pay them if the farmers defaulted. He sought a federally guaranteed minimum price of $0.70 per bushel, but was rebuffed by Prime Minister R. B. Bennett
, who saw the source of the problem as a global oversupply.
As farms failed, many young people migrated from farms to Alberta's cities, where the situation was scarcely better. As the unemployment rate rose, so did labour militancy. December 1932 saw a "hunger march" staged by approximately one thousand unemployed men marched on the Alberta legislature. Brownlee requested that the police break it up; while he pronounced himself sympathetic to the workers' ordeal, he felt that such an event would create a volatile atmosphere that would breed radicalism and communism. It was through this lens that he viewed the 1932 founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
; though many UFA members supported this new party, which saw itself as a partnership between farmers and labourers, Brownlee considered it dangerously socialist. The UFA itself also took a sharp left-ward turn, as the retiring Henry Wise Wood was replaced as president by Robert Gardiner.
The weakened economy presented significant challenges to provincial government finances. 1931 saw the first deficit of Brownlee's premiership, of approximately $2.5 million, and 1932's was still larger. During the latter year, the province came within hours of defaulting on a $3 million bond
, which was prevented only by a loan from the federal government. Brownlee cut spending aggressively: he closed most of the province's agricultural colleges, reduced the civil service
by more than a third, cut provincial employees' salaries, and disbanded the Alberta Provincial Police
. His government also increased corporate taxes, and implemented a new provincial income tax
. These measures proved insufficient, and Brownlee joined his colleagues in the other western provinces in entreating Bennett to help. Bennett was privately sympathetic to Brownlee, but refused to provide assistance.
In 1933, Brownlee was appointed to the Royal Commission on Banking and Currency
as a representative of unorthodox economic views (despite his conservative approach to Alberta's finances, outside of the province he was still viewed as a spokesperson of the progressive movement). Brownlee argued that banks were treating eastern and western debtors unequally, and that they were charging predatory interest rates to farmers. He joined the majority in calling for the creation of a central bank
in Canada, but was alone in proposing that it be entirely publicly controlled.
During the Great Depression's early years, Calgary schoolteacher and evangelist William Aberhart
began to preach a version of C. H. Douglas
's social credit
economic theory. Brownlee believed that Aberhart's proposals would be both unconstitutional (if implemented by a provincial government, which did not have control over monetary policy) and ineffective (since they would not create markets for Alberta's agricultural products). As Aberhart gained popularity, Brownlee attacked his solutions as illusory, but had little of his own to offer but critiques and orthodoxy.
, at the time Canada's highest court of appeal, where MacMillan emerged victorious.
Once the jury issued its finding, Brownlee realized that his time as Premier was finished. He announced that he would resign as soon as a successor could be found, and on July 10, 1934, was replaced by Richard Gavin Reid
.
Reid's government made Brownlee its chief strategist against Aberhart and social credit. One tactic he adopted was C. H. Douglas]] to serve as a consultant to the Alberta government on economic reconstruction. In doing this, Brownlee hoped both to co-opt the promise of social credit for the benefit of the UFA and to discredit Aberhart by demonstrating how widely his interpretation of social credit differed from Douglas's. This effort failed because Albertans, confronted by the contrast between the fiery, charismatic Aberhart and the aloof, technocratic Douglas, preferred the former. Brownlee also invited Aberhart to come to Edmonton and prepare proposals on which the government could act; this was an attempt to force him to take specific positions that could be attacked rather than relying on vague assurances of economic salvation, but was foiled by Aberhart's continued evasiveness.
Brownlee himself toured southern Alberta attacking Aberhart's policies as vague and unconstitutional. In April 1935, he gave a series of radio speeches designed to counter Aberhart's popular radio program, Back to the Bible Hour. When his customary appeals to logic did not work, Brownlee resorted to attacking Aberhart personally, comparing him to the Pied Piper of Hamelin
. Aberhart did not resist the comparison, retorting that the pied piper had "rid the capitol of all the rats"; Brownlee responded that, after doing that, he had led its children to their destruction. In May 1935, after Aberhart announced that his social credit movement would contest the next provincial election, Brownlee ridiculed its candidate-selection process—in which Aberhart personally interviewed and selected more candidates for each riding than could ultimately run—as one in which the candidates would be "wrapped in cellophane and carefully hidden away so they will not dry out on [Aberhart], until the day he calls out the fittest and discards the rest".
The 1935 election
took place August 22. Brownlee spent most of the campaign trying to retain his own riding of Ponoka. Despite the respect he commanded, his constituents were in desperate economic straits and tired of the UFA's orthodoxy, which had failed to raise their condition. As Brownlee later recalled:
On election day, every UFA candidate in the province was defeated, as Aberhart's won 56 of 63 seats. In Ponoka, Social Credit's Edith Rogers
defeated Brownlee 2,295 votes to 879. John Brownlee's political career was over.
In his capacity as UGG general counsel, Brownlee was responsible for its restructuring. Its bylaws provided that only farmers could buy shares directly from the company, but placed no limitation on who could buy them from other shareholders. This had the effect of limiting capital inflow, since few farmers could afford to buy shares during the depression, and transferring control of the company to non-farmers, who were purchasing shares from impoverished farmers. Brownlee's solution was to create two classes of share: an investment share with a par value of $20, and a voting share with a par value of $5. The former could be held by any person, to a maximum of 250 shares per person, while the latter could be held only by farmers, to a maximum of 25 shares per person.
At the time of Brownlee's appointment, the UGG was embroiled in an income tax
dispute. Though the farmers' movement had generally supported the 1917 introduction of income tax, as rates climbed the UGG began to resent it, especially given that the pools were exempt. While the rationale for this exemption—that the pools were agents of their members, and that any income should therefore be taxed as personal income once disbursed, and not as corporate income pre-disbursal—was initially accepted, the UGG argued that the pools' 1931 reorganization eliminated the differences between them and the UGG, and that the exemption thus put the UGG at a competitive disadvantage. In 1941, Brownlee travelled to Ottawa to express the UGG's case; there he collaborated with O. M. Biggar, representing the private grain companies in the form of the North-West Line Elevators Association (NLEA), who also objected to the pools' exemption, on a joint brief to the Minister of National Revenue. The government ruled that the pools were taxable; the pools appealed to the Exchequer Court, which found in the government's favour in 1943. By this time, the government had agreed not to tax the pools for pre-1941 revenue and to grant generous exemptions on taxation thereafter.
After World War II
, the federal government appointed the Royal Commission on Taxation of Cooperatives to examine the question in greater detail. Brownlee prepared the UGG's submission, and was pleased with the Commission's eventual findings: it recognized the UGG as a cooperative, and recommended that it be granted the same exemptions as the pools enjoyed. However, the government still intended to collect taxes from 1940 and 1941 from the UGG, but not from the pools. In February 1947, Brownlee returned to Ottawa to present the UGG's case to Finance Minister Douglas Abbott
, who eventually sided with the UGG and extended the pools' exemption to it.
The acrimony this dispute engendered between the pools and the UGG led the former to suggest that the latter was not a true cooperative, but rather an old-style grain company. Brownlee played a major role in disputing these allegations, and was a major contributor to The Grain Growers' Record 1906–1943, the UGG's written response. When he, as the UGG's delegate to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture
, opposed a resolution calling for the continued tax-exempt status of pools, the resolution's proponents suggested stating that it was "endorsed by the cooperatives"; Brownlee objected that the UGG was a cooperative, and the wording was withdrawn. The Alberta Wheat Pool later published a pamphlet entitled A History of Events Leading to Taxation of Cooperatives, which placed much of the blame on the UGG and Brownlee, accusing the latter of working with the hated private grain companies to "enforce taxation of the Wheat Pools". Seizing on an incorrect date in the pamphlet, Brownlee dismissed the charges—which were substantially true, in light of his 1941 joint brief with Biggar—as factually incorrect. Though UGG shareholders subjected him to vigorous questioning, he held firm and the controversy died down after he gave a series of radio addresses in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
In this capacity, he had offices in Calgary and Winnipeg
. He worked constantly, often arriving at work on a Monday with a briefcase full of dictation machine
recordings for secretaries to transcribe. Foster says that Brownlee was known by his staff as "a man whose life was his work, who lived in his briefcase, and whose only recreation seemed to be changing from one job to another".
He turned this work ethic to expanding the company, building new grain elevators and purchasing existing ones. At the same time, he undertook a study of the operating costs and volume of each of the UGG's delivery points. He found that roughly a dozen elevators were losing money, with climbing costs threatening to increase this number. Brownlee tried to reach accommodations with the UGG's competitors to divide among them centres too small to support more than one elevator, and achieved some success, especially with the Alberta Wheat Pool. At the same time, Brownlee increased the UGG's presence in larger centres, especially Regina
, Brandon
, and Winnipeg.
Brownlee remained intimately involved in the grain industry even outside the UGG, in part through his position on the Canadian Federation of Agriculture executive. In this capacity, he found himself in the middle of a controversy over the British Wheat Agreement (BWA). The BWA was an agreement to sell wheat to British clients at a fixed price over a four-year period. The price was to be adjusted during the following two years, "having regard to" world wheat prices. During the first four years, world wheat prices were continually above the price stipulated in the agreement, breeding resentment towards the British, especially since they sold much of this fixed price wheat for a large profit in European markets. This was exacerbated when the British refused to adjust the price upwards for the last two years, on the grounds that there was nothing in the agreement to compel them to do so. The result was considerable ill will and a loss by grain farmers of an estimated $350 million. The federal government, which had negotiated the agreement, offered to supplement the British payments by $65 million, a sum large enough to raise the ire of eastern Canadians but too small to placate western farmers. Brownlee, who had opposed the agreement, authorized a purchase of advertising across the country pointing out that the government fixed the domestic price of wheat at $0.77 per bushel while the world price reached as high as $2.18. In Brownlee's view, the $65 million payment by the government paled in comparison to the benefit to consumers of the federal policy. Subsequent international agreements, for which Brownlee acted as an advisor to the Canadian delegation, resulted in more favourable terms for farmers. Brownlee's continued status as one of the grain industry's leading figures was also exhibited by his involvement in government relations. He appeared before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture to oppose a system of allocating box cars to each grain elevator by formula, favouring instead a system whereby the Canadian Wheat Board
retained the flexibility to assign them as it saw fit. In his September 1960 submission to the Royal Commission on Transportation, In Defense of the Crow's Nest Pass Rates, he rejected the railways' calls to deregulate the rates they charged for the shipment of grain.
Brownlee's presidency coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Grain Growers Grain Company, one of the UGG's founding organizations. In celebration of the event, Brownlee travelled around the country speaking to UGG outlets. He also oversaw the publication, and wrote much, of The First Fifty Years, a history of the UGG to that point. In this capacity, he came into conflict with UGG Vice President R. C. Brown, in charge of the UGG department that published the book, and Assistant General Manager P. C. Watt. Brownlee had an interventionist style as President, which Foster acknowledged sometimes "verged on outright interference". As the years wore on, his decision-making became more autocratic, with the board of directors expected to serve as a rubber stamp.
On June 21, 1961, ill health forced Brownlee's resignation from the UGG.
, The Case for Alberta.
In the early 1940s, he met M. J. Coldwell
, the new federal leader of the CCF, on a train. According to Coldwell, in the ensuing conversation Brownlee indicated that he would be prepared to consider running federally as a CCF candidate. Coldwell excitedly reported this to some of the CCF's Alberta leaders; one of them telephoned Brownlee to question whether Coldwell's report was true. Brownlee adhered to a conservative view of how politics should be conducted, and was perhaps put off by the audacious telephone call; despite an apology from Coldwell, Brownlee did not indicate any further interest in running for the CCF.
Brownlee's occasional public comments on political issues still attracted considerable attention. He spoke to the 1944 UFA convention on post-war reconstruction, and expressed pessimism about Canada's economic prospects. He advocated a policy of full employment
, and emphasized that jobs had to be meaningful rather than "put[ting] men to work building roads like coolies in China when machines can do it better". He criticized the government-imposed wartime ceiling on wheat prices, of $1.25 per bushel, as forcing farmers to shoulder an unfair burden of a national crisis, as they had during the depression.
Brownlee's sons became successful at their careers: Alan graduated from law at the University of Alberta
and joined his father's firm, which was renamed Brownlee, Baldwin and Brownlee, while John studied photography
in Los Angeles
and returned to Canada to work as a photographer. Both married and had children. In time, Brownlee relinquished the law firm—now Brownlee and Brownlee—to Alan, and returned to Calgary, where he and his wife led a quiet, reserved life. When Calgary planners announced their intention to widen Memorial Drive, where the Brownlees lived, several residents expressed concern that the plan would destroy the street's trees; they consulted Brownlee, who telephoned the mayor and saved the trees.
In his last years, Brownlee received a number of honours. Premier of Manitoba
Duff Roblin inducted him into the province's Order of the Buffalo Hunt in November 1960, in recognition of his contributions to the prairie provinces. The UFA awarded him an honorary life membership, and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
appointed him to the National Productivity Council, though ill health prevented him from participating after its inaugural March 1961 meeting.
Beginning in June 1957, Brownlee underwent a series of major surgeries. By this time his memory was failing, and he often had to ask his wife for details that escaped him. He died July 15, 1961, two weeks after resigning from the UGG board and barely three after resigning as President.
concurs, noting that his willingness to confront the federal government sets him apart from Ernest Manning
, another contender for the title. In 1980, the Edmonton Journal
wrote that "[t]he lasting political estate left by former Premier John Brownlee has made Alberta what it is today, one of Canada's wealthiest provinces fuelled by billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties." A University of Calgary
undergraduate seminar in 2005 ranked Brownlee as the province's third greatest premier, behind Manning and Peter Lougheed
.
Brownlee's impact is also felt through the organizations he participated in founding: the Alberta Wheat Pool remained an important player in Canadian agriculture until 1998, when it merged with Manitoba Pool Elevators to form Agricore Cooperative Ltd.. In 2001, this new company merged with the UGG to form Agricore United
. In 2007, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool
took it over, forming Viterra
. Brownlee's vision, unique among the members of the Macmillan Commission, of a publicly controlled central bank became a reality in 1938, when the Bank of Canada
shifted from private to government control.
Brownlee was buried at Evergreen Memorial Gardens near Edmonton. The provincial government's John E. Brownlee Building in Edmonton is named in his honour, as is the University of Alberta Faculty of Law's John E. Brownlee Memorial Prize in Local Government Law.
Premier of Alberta
The Premier of Alberta is the first minister for the Canadian province of Alberta. He or she is the province's head of government and de facto chief executive. The current Premier of Alberta is Alison Redford. She became Premier by winning the Progressive Conservative leadership elections on...
, Canada, serving from 1925 until 1934. Born in Port Ryerse, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, he studied history and political science at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
's Victoria College
Victoria University in the University of Toronto
Victoria University is a constituent college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1836 and named for Queen Victoria. It is commonly called Victoria College, informally Vic, after the original academic component that now forms its undergraduate division...
before moving west to Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
to become a lawyer. His clients included the United Farmers of Alberta
United Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary...
(UFA); through his connection with that lobby group, he was involved in founding the United Grain Growers
United Grain Growers
United Grain Growers, or UGG, was a Canadian grain distributor. Founded in 1906 in Winnipeg, UGG was active in grain sales, crop inputs and livestock production services...
(UGG).
After the UFA entered electoral politics and won the 1921 election
Alberta general election, 1921
The Alberta general election of 1921 was the fifth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on July 18, 1921 to elect members to the 5th Alberta Legislative Assembly....
, new premier Herbert Greenfield
Herbert Greenfield
Herbert W. Greenfield was a Canadian politician who served as the fourth Premier of Alberta from 1921 until 1925. Born in Winchester, Hampshire, in England, he immigrated to Canada in his late twenties, settling first in Ontario and then in Alberta, where he farmed...
asked Brownlee to serve as his attorney-general. Brownlee agreed, and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
Legislative Assembly of Alberta
The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is one of two components of the Legislature of Alberta, the other being the Queen, represented by the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta. The Alberta legislature meets in the Alberta Legislature Building in the provincial capital, Edmonton...
in a by-election
By-election
A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....
in the riding of Ponoka
Ponoka (provincial electoral district)
Ponoka was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of Alberta represented in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1905 to 1986.-History:...
. As attorney-general, he was an important advisor to Greenfield's government. He was closely involved in its most important activities, including efforts to better the lot of farmers living in Alberta's drought-ridden south, divest itself of money-losing railways, and obtain authority over natural resources from the federal government. When a group of UFA backbenchers grew frustrated with Greenfield's weak leadership, they asked Brownlee to replace him. Brownlee eventually agreed, and became premier in 1925.
Brownlee enjoyed considerable early success as premier: he handily won the 1926 election
Alberta general election, 1926
The Alberta general election of 1926 was the sixth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 28, 1926 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The writs of election were issued on May 10, 1926 allowing for an election period of 40 days.After Herbert...
, signed an agreement with the federal government transferring control over Alberta's natural resources to its provincial government, sold the railways to the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railway companies, and ran a series of balanced budgets. Things became more difficult with the advent of the Great Depression
Great Depression in Canada
Canada was hit hard by the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1939, the gross national product dropped 40% . Unemployment reached 27% at the depth of the Depression in 1933...
. Brownlee found himself unable to restore the province to prosperity in the face of a global economic crisis, and reluctantly ran budget deficits. Political radicalism increased, and Brownlee found his orthodox approach to political economy attacked from multiple sides.
In 1934, Brownlee was sued for seduction by Vivian MacMillan, a family friend. The jury in the trial found in MacMillan's favour. Though the judge disregarded the jury's verdict, the trial's lurid testimony and the stigma resulting from the jury's finding forced Brownlee's resignation as premier. He was subsequently defeated in his re-election bid in Ponoka, as William Aberhart
William Aberhart
William Aberhart , also known as Bible Bill for his outspoken Baptist views, was a Canadian politician and the seventh Premier of Alberta between 1935 and 1943. The Social Credit party believed the reason for the depression was that people did not have enough money to spend, so the government...
's new Social Credit League
Social Credit Party of Alberta
The Alberta Social Credit Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada, that was founded on the social credit monetary policy and conservative Christian social values....
swept the province at the UFA's expense. Once out of politics, Brownlee resumed the practice of law and joined the management of the UGG, serving as its president and general manager from 1948 until shortly before his death in 1961.
Childhood
John Edward Brownlee was born August 27, 1883 in Port Ryerse, OntarioOntario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....
, to William "Bill" James Brownlee (1856–1934) and Christina Brownlee (née Shaw) (c. 1860–1941). He was named for his maternal grandfather, miller John Shaw, and paternal grandfather, carpenter Edward James Brownlee. Christina Brownlee was a former school mistress and William James Brownlee was the operator of the Port Ryerse general store. John Brownlee had one sister, Maude, born September 12, 1888. The Brownlees lived in the general store building, and it was here that John spent the happiest times of his childhood: he much preferred his parents' books, their political discussions with neighbours, and the details of their business to life outside the store. One anecdote has the village children, displeased with his serious temperament, throwing him into Lake Erie
Lake Erie
Lake Erie is the fourth largest lake of the five Great Lakes in North America, and the tenth largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has the shortest average water residence time. It is bounded on the north by the...
. By the age of seven, John was assisting at the store with such tasks as mixing butter
Butter
Butter is a dairy product made by churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is generally used as a spread and a condiment, as well as in cooking applications, such as baking, sauce making, and pan frying...
from the different dairies with which his father dealt to produce a standardized blend.
By the end of the 1880s, Port Ryerse was dying out. The advent of railways was making tiny lake ports obsolete, and in Port Ryerse's case this obsolescence was hastened by the town mill burning down in August 1890. Against this backdrop, the family moved to Bradshaw, in Lambton County
Lambton County, Ontario
Lambton County is a census division of the Canadian province of Ontario. The county is located in Southwestern Ontario. It is bordered on the north by Lake Huron, which flows into the St. Clair River, the county's western border and part of the Canada-United States border. To the south is Lake...
. There, John began school and attended Sunday school
Sunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...
at the village's Methodist church. He was the only pupil at his tiny school not from a farm; he later claimed that this experience gave him an early understanding of farmers and their concerns. He also became involved with his church's young people's club, which put on speaking programs. He was by nature shy, serious, and introverted, which made these programs a challenge at first; however, he found that he was able to do well at them through focus and discipline.
In September 1897, Brownlee began high school. The closest high school was in Sarnia
Sarnia
Sarnia is a city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.Sarnia may also refer to:* Sarnia, the Roman name for the island of Guernsey, Channel Islands** Sarnia Cherie, its national anthem**A piano suite by John Ireland, written about Guernsey....
, too distant for a daily commute, so at the age of fourteen Brownlee boarded away from his family, seeing them only during holidays and occasional weekends. He was a good student—described by his instructors as "diligent", if not brilliant—but was not a social success, being too studious for many of his peers. He wrote his departmental examinations in July 1900 and graduated shortly thereafter.
Early professional career
After graduating high school, Brownlee assisted his father with the management of the Bradshaw general store and travelled with him on a sales trip through northern Ontario. His family expected him to become a teacher but, at seventeen, his mother thought he was too young to start. Even so, in September 1901, just after his eighteenth birthday, he enrolled at Sarnia Model School. There, Brownlee pursued a fifteen week program that included such subjects as school management, pedagogyPedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....
, school law, reading instruction, and hygiene. He graduated December 12, 1901, second in his twenty person class, and within a month was one of two teachers at Bradshaw's school.
He fast gained a reputation as a competent instructor: his old work ethic served him well, and his seriousness, cool blue-grey eyes, and six foot four frame combined to give him an impressive presence. His $400 per year salary did not satisfy his ambition, and in the spring of 1904, after two and a half years on the job, he decided that he wanted a university education. His teaching salary was not sufficient to finance this, so he spent the summer of 1904 selling a one volume encyclopaedia in the newly-settled areas around Rapid City
Rapid City, Manitoba
Rapid City is a town in southwest Manitoba, Canada located about 30km north of Brandon, Manitoba. Rapid City is situated in the Rural Municipality of Saskatchewan and is built on the banks of the Little Saskatchewan River. The town is a small farming community with a population of about five...
, Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
. Besides providing him with the income he required—he was a patient, effective salesman and later boasted that he was never thrown off of a farm—the job gave the now 21-year-old Brownlee his first glimpse of Western Canada
Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...
. Returning to Ontario at the summer's end, he enrolled at Victoria College
Victoria University in the University of Toronto
Victoria University is a constituent college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1836 and named for Queen Victoria. It is commonly called Victoria College, informally Vic, after the original academic component that now forms its undergraduate division...
at the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
.
University
In Toronto, Brownlee pursued an honours program with specializations in historyHistory
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
. Besides these chosen foci, he was required to study mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
, biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, composition, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, and two additional languages—despite having some knowledge of 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...
, he chose German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Hebrew. He continued his trend of diligent scholarship, and earned As in all subjects his first year except for Latin, German, and mathematics, in which he received Bs. The trend continued to his third year, when he was among the top five in his class in all subjects except economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, in which he was eighth. As he became more involved in extracurricular pursuits, these grades fell; after his fourth and final year, he graduated with III Class Honours, leaving him out of the top tier of students. His professors included historian George Wrong, whom Brownlee held in high esteem.
Brownlee was involved in a wide array of extracurricular pursuits. Chief among these were the Union Literary Society (dubbed "the Lit"), the Acta Victoriana (the college's monthly journal), and "the Bob" (a satirical revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
). The first of these allowed him to hone his skills at formal debate; he earned a reputation as "one of the more effective although not the most dramatic of speakers". In his involvement with the journal, he developed his business skills: in his second year he was named assistant business manager, and he was promoted to business manager in his fourth year. His financial management of Acta Victoriana, along with that of the college glee club
Glee club
A glee club is a musical group or choir group, historically of male voices but also of female or mixed voices, which traditionally specializes in the singing of short songs—glees—by trios or quartets. In the late 19th Century it was very popular in most schools and was made a tradition...
(for which he also served as business manager during his fourth year, organizing a ten day tour of the Niagara region), earned him accolades. For the Bob, Brownlee temporarily abandoned his seriousness to script skits poking fun at the college and his classmates; these won good reviews, with the Acta Victoriana declaring the 1908 edition, which Brownlee headed, "one of the best ever". The summer following his third year, he attended the Conference of College Young Men's Associations at Niagara-on-the-Lake
Niagara-on-the-Lake
Niagara-on-the-Lake is a Canadian town located in Southern Ontario where the Niagara River meets Lake Ontario in the Niagara Region of the southern part of the province of Ontario. It is located across the Niagara river from Youngstown, New York, USA...
, where he attended Bible study
Bible study (Christian)
In Christianity, Bible study is the study of the Bible by ordinary people as a personal religious or spiritual practice. Some denominations may call this devotion or devotional acts; however in other denominations devotion has other meanings...
classes and heard guest speakers encourage him to pursue a career in the clergy.
Brownlee's summers in university were spent selling stereoscopic viewers in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and magazine subscriptions in Toronto. He also derived a salary in his fourth year as business manager of the Acta Victoriana. These sources of income allowed him to rent a small room in a private home, and to subscribe to a meal plan at a local eatery for C$2.50 per week.
Family
During Brownlee's convocation in 1908, he sneaked off to go canoeing in the Humber RiverHumber River (Ontario)
The Humber River is one of two major rivers on either side of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the other being the Don River to the east. It was designated a Canadian Heritage River on September 24, 1999....
with a female classmate, Isabella Govenlock. Upon their return, they announced that they were engaged. The news stunned friends of both, none of whom was aware of any previous interest on either's part in the other; moreover, the apparent spontaneity of the engagement seemed at odds with Brownlee's reputation for seriousness and caution. The engagement did not last, and the following winter Brownlee met and began to court Florence Edy, an arts student at McMaster College. During the summer of 1909, Edy moved with her family to Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
; Brownlee, for a combination of personal and professional reasons, soon followed. The pair was married December 23, 1912, at the Toronto home of Edy's sister Blanche. A honeymoon trip back to Calgary via Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
followed.
Brownlee and his wife had two sons: John Edy Brownlee was born December 1915, and Alan Marshall Brownlee was born September 1917. Florence's pregnancy with Alan, combined with a bout of poor health before it, made her a virtual invalid in subsequent years. This was exacerbated by the 1919 birth and death in infancy of a daughter. The same year, Brownlee visited his family in Ontario; he returned to Alberta with his sister, Maude, who assisted Florence with the care of her children. Soon after, a full-time maid was hired to assist with house keeping.
While John Brownlee relished life in Alberta, Florence missed her friends and family in Ontario. Her health was only made worse by worry about her sons' health: John was perpetually nervous, and Alan was high-strung and sickly. It did not help that, beginning in 1921, her husband spent the work week in Edmonton, commuting home to Calgary only for the weekends. In 1923, the family moved to Edmonton's Garneau region. In 1926, on the way home from a visit east, Florence Brownlee and her sons were examined at the Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic
Mayo Clinic is a not-for-profit medical practice and medical research group specializing in treating difficult patients . Patients are referred to Mayo Clinic from across the U.S. and the world, and it is known for innovative and effective treatments. Mayo Clinic is known for being at the top of...
, where all three were given clean bills of health; Florence in particular was advised to "resume a more active life".
Although Brownlee's public image was of a severe and humourless technocrat, in his family life he allowed himself some levity. Christmas morning 1923, the Brownlee boys awoke to find footprints of coal dust leading from the fireplace to the stairs and a handwritten note from Santa Claus
Santa Claus
Santa Claus is a folklore figure in various cultures who distributes gifts to children, normally on Christmas Eve. Each name is a variation of Saint Nicholas, but refers to Santa Claus...
apologizing from the mess and explaining that he had been searching for one of his reindeer
Reindeer
The reindeer , also known as the caribou in North America, is a deer from the Arctic and Subarctic, including both resident and migratory populations. While overall widespread and numerous, some of its subspecies are rare and one has already gone extinct.Reindeer vary considerably in color and size...
. It transpired that he had mistaken one of Florence's feet, emerging from the covers at the foot of her bed, for an antler. On another occasion, Brownlee reacted to his sons' displeasure at leaving his parents' cat in Ontario by acquiring a large bloodhound
Bloodhound
The Bloodhound is a large breed of dog which, while originally bred to hunt deer and wild boar, was later bred specifically to track human beings. It is a scenthound, tracking by smell, as opposed to a sighthound, which tracks using vision. It is famed for its ability to discern human odors even...
, which he himself came to enjoy.
Early career
At the time of Brownlee's graduation from Victoria College, the path of entry to his chosen profession, law, was through three years of articlingArticled clerk
An articled clerk, also known as an articling student, is an apprentice in a professional firm in Commonwealth countries. Generally the term arises in the accountancy profession and in the legal profession. The articled clerk signs a contract, known as "articles of clerkship", committing to a...
to the exclusion of law school
Law school
A law school is an institution specializing in legal education.- Law degrees :- Canada :...
. Brownlee and Victoria classmate Fred Albright resolved to go west; after narrowing the choice to either Calgary or Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, the former was selected on the basis that the legal profession was less established there and that young lawyers without significant capital would be likely to fare better. There, Brownlee was articled with Lougheed, Bennett, Allison & McLaws, whose partners included Sir James Lougheed and R. B. Bennett
R. B. Bennett
Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett, PC, KC was a Canadian lawyer, businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He served as the 11th Prime Minister of Canada from August 7, 1930, to October 23, 1935, during the worst of the Great Depression years...
. Brownlee became quite close to Bennett; the future Prime Minister often visited him after hours while Brownlee was studying, and use his honed memory and impressive oratorical skills to give the younger man detailed lectures on whatever area of law he was reading about, illustrated by precise and invariably accurate references to cases. Despite his relationship with Bennett, Brownlee was dissatisfied with the work he was being given, and he moved to Muir, Jephson and Adams, where he hoped to practice more commercial law
Commercial law
Commercial law is the body of law that governs business and commercial transactions...
. There he benefited from the tutelage of James Muir, who spent hours finding precise citations relevant to Brownlee's studies, and then left the casebooks open to the appropriate page for Brownlee to find the next morning.
On December 16, 1912, Brownlee was called to the Alberta Bar
Law Society of Alberta
The Law Society of Alberta is the self-regulating body for lawyers in Alberta, Canada.-Purpose:The Law Society is created and governed by the . As a law society, the Law Society is much more than a professional association and every lawyer who practices in Alberta must belong to it...
. He began work as an associate with Muir, Jephson and Adams; in 1914 he was made partner. He took advantage of his membership in Victoria College's newly-founded Calgary alumni branch to build professional connections and enjoy edifying conversation. On the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Brownlee did not enlist; his biographer, Lakeland College
Lakeland College (Alberta)
Lakeland College is a post-secondary college in Alberta. It is publicly funded, and maintains two campuses in Vermilion and Lloydminster. Lakeland serves about 7,500 full- and part-time students....
historian Franklin Foster, speculates that this may have been because of his eyesight, but notes that he did not involve himself in patriotic fundraising or volunteer work and questions whether he "completely shared the values and ideals of his generation".
Farmers' lawyer
One of Brownlee's firm's major clients was a new agricultural lobby organization called the United Farmers of AlbertaUnited Farmers of Alberta
The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary...
, and it was with this group that Brownlee began to work most closely. Among his first tasks for the UFA was to assist with the creation of a province-wide farmer-owned company to own and operate the province's grain elevators. Early in 1913, he was part of a delegation to lobby the provincial government of Arthur Sifton to grant a charter to such a company; Sifton was cognizant of the political power of the UFA, and quickly incorporated the Alberta Farmers' Cooperative Elevator Company (AFCEC) Limited, but refused the farmers' request to guarantee bank loans to the new company. These guarantees were instead received from the Grain Growers Grain Company (GGG), a Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
-based equivalent of the AFCEC.
Brownlee became the AFCEC's lawyer, and in that capacity dealt with lawsuits against the company alleging incompetence on the part of its general manager and fraud on the part of a former auditor. His most important work for the AFCEC, however, was in merging it with the GGG to form the United Grain Growers
United Grain Growers
United Grain Growers, or UGG, was a Canadian grain distributor. Founded in 1906 in Winnipeg, UGG was active in grain sales, crop inputs and livestock production services...
(UGG). In 1916, new AFCEC president Cecil Rice-Jones began to advocate the amalgamation of western Canada's farmer-controlled grain elevator companies. 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....
's farmers were uninterested, leaving the AFCEC and the GGG as the two potential partners. After accompanying Rice-Jones to a meeting with Alberta Public Works Minister Charles Stewart
Charles Stewart (Canadian politician)
Charles Stewart, PC was a Canadian politician who served as the third Premier of Alberta from 1917 until 1921. Born in Strabane, Ontario, in Wentworth County, Stewart was a farmer who moved west to Alberta after his farm was destroyed by a storm...
, Brownlee initially found himself in agreement with Stewart's belief that the companies' shareholders would not accept amalgamation, and that a holding company
Holding company
A holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...
should instead be created to run both companies' affairs. After further study, however, he changed his mind and pursued the amalgamation with his typical focus. He reviewed the two companies' corporate charters, and found that the GGG's prevented it from either selling out to another company or acquiring sufficient capitalization to buy out the AFCEC. The charter could only be amended by the Parliament of Canada
Parliament of Canada
The Parliament of Canada is the federal legislative branch of Canada, seated at Parliament Hill in the national capital, Ottawa. Formally, the body consists of the Canadian monarch—represented by her governor general—the Senate, and the House of Commons, each element having its own officers and...
, and the GGG was concerned that any request for amendments would lead eastern Canadian financial interests to successfully lobby for a weakening of farmers' rights. A meeting of both companies' boards at the GGG's Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
offices nevertheless reached the reluctant conclusion that this route was necessary for amalgamation. Though Brownlee continued to fear resistance from the shareholders, both companies' annual general meeting
Annual general meeting
An annual general meeting is a meeting that official bodies, and associations involving the public , are often required by law to hold...
s approved the proposal. Brownlee was heavily involved at both meetings, fielding questions from shareholders about legal ramifications and serving on ad hoc subcommittees to study aspects of the proposal. Once the proposal was approved, he drew up the necessary agreements, bylaws, stock certificates, and other instruments. The UGG came into existence September 1, 1917.
As lawyer for the UGG, Brownlee began to sympathize with the prevailing farmers' view that the eastern Canadian business establishment was hostile to their interests; for example, when UGG wanted to sell twine
Twine
Twine is a light string or strong thread composed of two or more smaller strands or yarns twisted together. More generally, the term can be applied to any thin cord....
, no manufacturer would supply it. He recommended that the UGG reduce farmers' reliance on the eastern establishment by expanding its operations into insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
, investment
Investment
Investment has different meanings in finance and economics. Finance investment is putting money into something with the expectation of gain, that upon thorough analysis, has a high degree of security for the principal amount, as well as security of return, within an expected period of time...
, and real estate
Real estate
In general use, esp. North American, 'real estate' is taken to mean "Property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals, or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this; an item of real property; buildings or...
. The result was the United Grain Growers Securities Ltd. He also helped the UGG quietly sell the stock it held in the Home Bank
Home Bank
The Home Bank of Canada was a Canadian bank that was incorporated July 10, 1903 in Toronto. It failed August 18, 1923 and was the subject of a Canadian Royal Commission initiated by Prime Minister Mackenzie King in 1924....
when UGG directors began to doubt the bank's soundness; this subtlety was considered essential, as the directors were concerned that airing their doubts publicly would make the bank's failure a self-fulfilling prophecy
Self-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and...
. When UGG Assistant General Manager J. R. Murray found an interested buyer, Brownlee advised Murray against insisting on an intricate written sales contract for fear that the buyer would sense the directors' concerns. His advice was heeded, and the sale was concluded December 29, 1919.
In July 1919 Brownlee left Muir, Jephson and Adams to accept a full-time position with the UGG at $6,000 per year. Several months later this was increased to $7,500 in view of his increased responsibilities as General Manager of UGG Securities. In 1922, he was made King's Counsel. Brownlee was doing well in both law and business, and expected to continue doing so for the foreseeable future.
UFA and politicization
Though most of his legal work was for the AFCEC and then the UGG, Brownlee also made contact with leaders of the UFA proper, including William IrvineWilliam Irvine (Canadian politician)
William Irvine was a Canadian politician, journalist and clergyman. He served in the Canadian House of Commons on three different occasions, as a representative of Labour, the United Farmers of Alberta and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation...
, Irene Parlby
Irene Parlby
Irene Parlby was a Canadian women's farm leader, activist and politician.Born in London, England, Parlby came to Canada in 1896. In 1913, Parlby helped to found the first women's local of the United Farmers of Alberta. In 1921, she was elected to the Alberta Legislature for the riding of Lacombe,...
, Herbert Greenfield
Herbert Greenfield
Herbert W. Greenfield was a Canadian politician who served as the fourth Premier of Alberta from 1921 until 1925. Born in Winchester, Hampshire, in England, he immigrated to Canada in his late twenties, settling first in Ontario and then in Alberta, where he farmed...
, and, most importantly, Henry Wise Wood
Henry Wise Wood
Henry Wise Wood was an American-born Canadian agrarian thinker and activist. He became director in 1914 and was elected president of the United Farmers of Alberta in 1916. Under his leadership the UFA became the most powerful political lobby group in the province...
. The charismatic Wood was the UFA's president, and Brownlee often accompanied him to speaking engagements at UFA locals across Alberta in 1919 and 1920. Wood held meetings enraptured with his sermons on cooperation and social justice—Brownlee at one point likened the UFA to a religion—while Brownlee explained the services offered by the UFA's central office and answered members' legal questions. His trips with Wood aroused Brownlee's interest, and he began to study in greater detail the political side of the farmers' movement.
Another of Brownlee's contacts was T. A. Crerar
Thomas Crerar
Thomas Alexander Crerar, was a western Canadian politician and a leader of the short-lived Progressive Party of Canada. He was born in Molesworth, Ontario, and moved to Manitoba at a young age....
, who had recently become leader of the Progressive Party of Canada
Progressive Party of Canada
The Progressive Party of Canada was a political party in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. It was linked with the provincial United Farmers parties in several provinces and, in Manitoba, ran candidates and formed governments as the Progressive Party of Manitoba...
, and it was to him that Brownlee turned for his political education. Crerar introduced Brownlee to Ernest Charles Drury
Ernest Charles Drury
Ernest Charles Drury was a farmer, politician and writer who served as the eighth Premier of Ontario, Canada, from 1919 to 1923 as the head of a United Farmers of Ontario - Labour coalition government.-Family:...
, the newly-elected United Farmers of Ontario
United Farmers of Ontario
The United Farmers of Ontario was a political party in Ontario, Canada. It was the Ontario provincial branch of the United Farmers movement of the early part of the 20th century.- Foundation and rise :...
Premier of Ontario
Premier of Ontario
The Premier of Ontario is the first Minister of the Crown for the Canadian province of Ontario. The Premier is appointed as the province's head of government by the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, and presides over the Executive council, or Cabinet. The Executive Council Act The Premier of Ontario...
, and arranged for a meeting between Brownlee and Charles Stewart, by now Alberta Premier. During the latter meeting, Brownlee told Stewart that he felt that the UFA's desires could be accommodated within Stewart's Liberal
Alberta Liberal Party
The Alberta Liberal Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Originally founded in 1905, when the province was created, it was the dominant political party until 1921 when it was defeated. It has never been in government since that time...
government, but warned against a quick election. Foster suggests that this strategic advice from a political neophyte offended Stewart; whether this is true or not, Stewart did call a quick election, for July 1921. The UFA had decided in January 1919, against Woods' wishes, that it would run candidates in the next election.
Before the provincial election, there was a federal by-election scheduled for June 1921 in Medicine Hat. Crerar's Progressives were running Robert Gardiner, a local farmer, and Crerar asked Wood and Greenfield (the Vice President of the UFA) to broker an alliance between farmers and labour
Labour movement
The term labour movement or labor movement is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and governments, in particular through the implementation of specific laws governing labour...
in the mixed rural-urban riding. Before these efforts could come to fruition, the federal government of Conservative
Conservative Party of Canada (historical)
The Conservative Party of Canada has gone by a variety of names over the years since Canadian Confederation. Initially known as the "Liberal-Conservative Party", it dropped "Liberal" from its name in 1873, although many of its candidates continued to use this name.As a result of World War I and the...
Arthur Meighen
Arthur Meighen
Arthur Meighen, PC, QC was a Canadian lawyer and politician. He served two terms as the ninth Prime Minister of Canada: from July 10, 1920 to December 29, 1921; and from June 29 to September 25, 1926. He was the first Prime Minister born after Confederation, and the only one to represent a riding...
disclosed allegations of irregularities in the management of the some of the UGG's elevators. At a hearing on June 4, former employees testified of storage bins with false bottoms and bribed railway employees. These allegations regarded events from 1912 until 1914, and their sudden prominence in 1921 made some in the UFA suspect that the hearings were politically motivated. Brownlee, as the UGG's attorney, was successful in obtaining an injunction
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
against further hearings until the UGG had time to conduct its own investigation and, as importantly, until the Medicine Hat by-election was over. Gardiner won by a wide margin.
While most of the UFA was gearing up for the 1921 provincial election
Alberta general election, 1921
The Alberta general election of 1921 was the fifth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on July 18, 1921 to elect members to the 5th Alberta Legislative Assembly....
, Brownlee went on vacation in Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
for a month; despite his recent interest in politics, he still viewed himself as a lawyer and businessman with little role to play in the UFA's electoral activities. Before leaving Calgary, he was assured by Wood that the UFA would not win more than 20 of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta
Legislative Assembly of Alberta
The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is one of two components of the Legislature of Alberta, the other being the Queen, represented by the Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta. The Alberta legislature meets in the Alberta Legislature Building in the provincial capital, Edmonton...
's 61 seats; in fact, it won 38. Brownlee watched the results come in at the offices of the Victoria Colonist.
The UFA, not a political party in the conventional sense, had contested the election without a leader. While its control of the majority of seats in the legislature entitled it, under the conventions of the Westminster parliamentary system, to form the government, it was not clear who would become Premier. Wood was the natural choice, but he declined the job for several reasons. To Brownlee's surprise, Wood proposed that he should become premier instead. Brownlee declined, surmising that many of the newly-elected farmer-politicians would have seen an urban lawyer in the premier's office as a repudiation of much of what they stood for. Ultimately, Greenfield was selected.
Attorney-General
Greenfield appointed Brownlee his attorney-general, and soon after Brownlee was acclaimed in a by-election in PonokaPonoka (provincial electoral district)
Ponoka was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of Alberta represented in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1905 to 1986.-History:...
. His training in business and law, unique in the UFA caucus, gave him a central role in most of the government's initiatives; he also led the defense against attacks from the Liberal
Alberta Liberal Party
The Alberta Liberal Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Originally founded in 1905, when the province was created, it was the dominant political party until 1921 when it was defeated. It has never been in government since that time...
opposition, and eventually became responsible for setting the agenda for cabinet meetings.
Brownlee quickly entrenched himself in the conservative wing of the UFA caucus. He resisted measures that would take decision-making out of government departments and transfer them to the caucus or UFA locals, and opposed the efforts of some UFA backbenchers to transform the application of the Westminster
Westminster System
The Westminster system is a democratic parliamentary system of government modelled after the politics of the United Kingdom. This term comes from the Palace of Westminster, the seat of the Parliament of the United Kingdom....
system in Alberta. When the UFA's more radical elements called for the creation of a government-owned bank, Brownlee dismissed the idea as neither financially nor constitutionally feasible. His concern for the government's finances extended to its budget deficit; when he found Greenfield's spending cuts wanting, he cut staff from his own department to set an example. In a further attempt to better the government's financial position, he unsuccessfully advocated the sale of the its four money-losing railways to Canadian National (CPR) or Canadian Pacific (CPR).
A longstanding objective of the Alberta government had been winning control of Alberta's lands and natural resources from the federal government. The older provinces already had this control, but when Alberta, 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....
, and Manitoba
Manitoba
Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...
were admitted to Confederation, the federal government retained resource rights and paid the provincial governments an annual grant as compensation. As attorney-general, Brownlee was Alberta's chief negotiator in these efforts, and met frequently with representatives of Liberal
Liberal Party of Canada
The Liberal Party of Canada , colloquially known as the Grits, is the oldest federally registered party in Canada. In the conventional political spectrum, the party sits between the centre and the centre-left. Historically the Liberal Party has positioned itself to the left of the Conservative...
Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Canada
The Prime Minister of Canada is the primary minister of the Crown, chairman of the Cabinet, and thus head of government for Canada, charged with advising the Canadian monarch or viceroy on the exercise of the executive powers vested in them by the constitution...
William Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921 to June 28, 1926; from September 25, 1926 to August 7, 1930; and from October 23, 1935 to November 15, 1948...
. While negotiations occasionally seemed promising, King was unwilling to fully commit to the transfer, possibly because Charles Stewart, now King's Alberta lieutenant, and John R. Boyle
John R. Boyle
John Robert Boyle was a Canadian politician and jurist who served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, a cabinet minister in the Government of Alberta, and a judge on the Supreme Court of Alberta. Born in Ontario, he came west and eventually settled in Edmonton, where he practiced...
, leader of the provincial Liberals, were sworn enemies of the UFA.
As a farmers' government, the UFA was committed to helping farmers in the province's drought-stricken south. Brownlee authored the Drought Relief Act, which created a Drought Relief Commissioner to provide farmers with financial counselling and help them reach settlements with banks when they were unable to pay their debts. He also played a leading role in the creation of the Alberta Wheat Pool
Alberta Wheat Pool
The Alberta Wheat Pool was the first of Canada's wheat farmer co-operatives.-Early years:In 1923, the United Farmers of Alberta met with then Attorney General John Edward Brownlee to consider setting up a Wheat Pool just in Alberta...
.
Brownlee's department was responsible for administration of prohibition
Prohibition in Canada
The temperance movement reached its height in Canada in the 1920s, when outside imports were cut off by provincial referendums. As legislation prohibiting consumption of alcohol was repealed, it was typically replaced with regulation restricting the sale of alcohol to minors and imposing excise...
. Though the policy initially enjoyed the support of most Albertans, disregard for it was sufficiently widespread that effective enforcement proved impossible. The 1922 murder of Alberta Provincial Police
Alberta Provincial Police
The Alberta Provincial Police was a police force active in Alberta, Canada between 1917 and 1932. In 1917, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police left Alberta due to a lack of sufficient resources in light of its increased responsibilities for national security during World War I...
constable Steve Lawson by bootleggers Emil Picariello and Florence Lassandro helped turn public opinion against it, and it was repealed the next year. The Lord's Day Act, which prohibited most commerce on Sundays, was also Brownlee's responsibility, though he had little enthusiasm for it and prosecuted only the most flagrant violations.
Many UFA MLAs came to see the government's reliance on Brownlee as embarrassing, and Greenfield's abilities as too limited to continue to lead. In 1924, they pressured Greenfield to resign so Brownlee could replace him; Brownlee scuppered the plot by warning that Greenfield's resignation would be accompanied by his own. A second attempt in 1925 was successful when Wood intervened to convince Brownlee to accept the premiership and Greenfield assured him that he would be pleased to be rid of it. Brownlee became Premier of Alberta November 23, 1925.
First term (1926 – 1930)
Brownlee's first challenges as premier were similar to those he had faced as attorney-general: winning control of Alberta's natural resources, selling the money-losing railways, and balancing the provincial budget. Before he could do any of these, however, he needed to win the impending provincial election. He accomplished this by winning 43 seats in the 1926 electionAlberta general election, 1926
The Alberta general election of 1926 was the sixth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 28, 1926 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The writs of election were issued on May 10, 1926 allowing for an election period of 40 days.After Herbert...
, an increase from the 38 that the UFA had won in 1921 and enough for a majority in the 60-seat legislature.
Once returned to office, Brownlee turned his attention to his other priorities. Many of them required the cooperation of King's Liberal federal government: provincial control of resources would require the acquiescence of the federal government, and Brownlee felt that the deficit was in part the result of the federal government's failure to cover its rightful share of expenses. King was himself reliant on the UFA: his minority government
Minority government
A minority government or a minority cabinet is a cabinet of a parliamentary system formed when a political party or coalition of parties does not have a majority of overall seats in the parliament but is sworn into government to break a Hung Parliament election result. It is also known as a...
was survived thank to the support of Progressives and allied factions, including the 11 UFA MPs. Though some UFA legislators preferred Arthur Meighen's Conservatives, Brownlee personally supported the King government, and even appeared to consider an offer from the Prime Minister to take Brownlee into his cabinet.
Brownlee attempted to leverage his relationship with King to win provincial control of natural resources. He won such an agreement in 1926, but it was soon scuttled by the federal addition of a clause requiring Alberta to continue supporting separate Roman Catholic schools. Wrangling over this clause persisted until 1929, when a compromise was reached. All that remained was the question of compensation to Alberta for land given away by the federal government, and by the end of 1929 agreement on this too was reached. Brownlee returned from Ottawa to Alberta, where he was greeted by 3,000 cheering supporters.
Brownlee was similarly successful in divesting the government of its railways. When his initial attempts to sell them to the CNR or CPR failed, the provincial government took over direct operation of the lines in 1927. In 1928, they began to show a profit, and one of the lines was soon sold to the CPR. A joint offer from the CPR and CNR for the remaining lines was judged too low, and they were sold to the CPR near the end of 1928 for $25 million.
Control of natural resources and the divestment of the railways were two factors that permitted balanced provincial budgets, the first of which was registered in 1925. Despite this success, Brownlee continued to advocate austerity, and tried unsuccessfully to persuade the federal government to assume a greater share of the costs of new social programs, such as the old age pension. His resulting reputation as a penny-pincher came at a cost to his personal popularity.
Brownlee's government also attempted to advance a progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
agenda. One way this manifested itself was an attempt to consolidate Alberta's thousands of school districts into a far smaller number of school divisions. The plan was supported by educational reformers who believed that the decentralized status quo made province-wide reform impossible, but was scrapped when rural residents expressed fears that it would mean the closure of local schools. Another progressive initiative was the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta
Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta
In 1928, the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, Canada, enacted the Sexual Sterilization Act. The Act, drafted to protect the gene pool, allowed for sterilization of mentally disabled persons in order to prevent the transmission of undesirable traits to offspring.At that time, eugenicists argued that...
, which allowed for the sterilization
Sterilization (surgical procedure)
Sterilization refers to any of a number of medical techniques that intentionally leave a person unable to reproduce. It is a method of birth control. For other causes of sterility, see infertility....
of "mental defectives". While the act, repealed in 1972, is now viewed as barbaric, at the time it enjoyed the support of moral reformers like Nellie McClung
Nellie McClung
Nellie McClung, born Nellie Letitia Mooney , was a Canadian feminist, politician, and social activist. She was a part of the social and moral reform movements prevalent in Western Canada in the early 1900s...
, who believed it was for the subjects' own protection.
Second term (1930 – 1934)
Brownlee campaigned vigorously during the 1930 electionAlberta general election, 1930
The Alberta general election of 1930 was the seventh general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 19, 1930 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta....
, and was rewarded with a slightly diminished majority. However, the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
was already making itself felt in Alberta. The price of wheat
Wheat
Wheat is a cereal grain, originally from the Levant region of the Near East, but now cultivated worldwide. In 2007 world production of wheat was 607 million tons, making it the third most-produced cereal after maize and rice...
, Alberta's major export, declined from a high of $1.78 per bushel in the summer of 1929, to $1.00 in the following March, to $0.45 by the end of 1930. The Alberta Wheat Pool
Alberta Wheat Pool
The Alberta Wheat Pool was the first of Canada's wheat farmer co-operatives.-Early years:In 1923, the United Farmers of Alberta met with then Attorney General John Edward Brownlee to consider setting up a Wheat Pool just in Alberta...
(AWP) guaranteed its members a minimum price of $1.00 per bushel (itself not enough for many farmers to earn a living), and it found itself facing ruination. Banks denied credit to it and to individual farmers, which in turn made it difficult for the latter to afford seed for the 1931 crop. The provincial government faced calls to provide loan guarantees. Brownlee was concerned that such guarantees would encourage lenders to make loans at higher interest rates, with the knowledge that the provincial government would pay them if the farmers defaulted. He sought a federally guaranteed minimum price of $0.70 per bushel, but was rebuffed by Prime Minister R. B. Bennett
R. B. Bennett
Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett, PC, KC was a Canadian lawyer, businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He served as the 11th Prime Minister of Canada from August 7, 1930, to October 23, 1935, during the worst of the Great Depression years...
, who saw the source of the problem as a global oversupply.
As farms failed, many young people migrated from farms to Alberta's cities, where the situation was scarcely better. As the unemployment rate rose, so did labour militancy. December 1932 saw a "hunger march" staged by approximately one thousand unemployed men marched on the Alberta legislature. Brownlee requested that the police break it up; while he pronounced himself sympathetic to the workers' ordeal, he felt that such an event would create a volatile atmosphere that would breed radicalism and communism. It was through this lens that he viewed the 1932 founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
Co-operative Commonwealth Federation
The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation was a Canadian political party founded in 1932 in Calgary, Alberta, by a number of socialist, farm, co-operative and labour groups, and the League for Social Reconstruction...
; though many UFA members supported this new party, which saw itself as a partnership between farmers and labourers, Brownlee considered it dangerously socialist. The UFA itself also took a sharp left-ward turn, as the retiring Henry Wise Wood was replaced as president by Robert Gardiner.
The weakened economy presented significant challenges to provincial government finances. 1931 saw the first deficit of Brownlee's premiership, of approximately $2.5 million, and 1932's was still larger. During the latter year, the province came within hours of defaulting on a $3 million bond
Bond (finance)
In finance, a bond is a debt security, in which the authorized issuer owes the holders a debt and, depending on the terms of the bond, is obliged to pay interest to use and/or to repay the principal at a later date, termed maturity...
, which was prevented only by a loan from the federal government. Brownlee cut spending aggressively: he closed most of the province's agricultural colleges, reduced the civil service
Civil service
The term civil service has two distinct meanings:* A branch of governmental service in which individuals are employed on the basis of professional merit as proven by competitive examinations....
by more than a third, cut provincial employees' salaries, and disbanded the Alberta Provincial Police
Alberta Provincial Police
The Alberta Provincial Police was a police force active in Alberta, Canada between 1917 and 1932. In 1917, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police left Alberta due to a lack of sufficient resources in light of its increased responsibilities for national security during World War I...
. His government also increased corporate taxes, and implemented a new provincial income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
. These measures proved insufficient, and Brownlee joined his colleagues in the other western provinces in entreating Bennett to help. Bennett was privately sympathetic to Brownlee, but refused to provide assistance.
In 1933, Brownlee was appointed to the Royal Commission on Banking and Currency
Royal Commission on Banking and Currency
The Royal Commission on Banking and Currency was a 1933 Canadian royal commission tasked with reviewing the Canadian government's involvement in monetary policy...
as a representative of unorthodox economic views (despite his conservative approach to Alberta's finances, outside of the province he was still viewed as a spokesperson of the progressive movement). Brownlee argued that banks were treating eastern and western debtors unequally, and that they were charging predatory interest rates to farmers. He joined the majority in calling for the creation of a central bank
Central bank
A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is a public institution that usually issues the currency, regulates the money supply, and controls the interest rates in a country. Central banks often also oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries...
in Canada, but was alone in proposing that it be entirely publicly controlled.
During the Great Depression's early years, Calgary schoolteacher and evangelist William Aberhart
William Aberhart
William Aberhart , also known as Bible Bill for his outspoken Baptist views, was a Canadian politician and the seventh Premier of Alberta between 1935 and 1943. The Social Credit party believed the reason for the depression was that people did not have enough money to spend, so the government...
began to preach a version of C. H. Douglas
C. H. Douglas
Major C. H. Douglas MIMechE, MIEE, , was a British engineer and pioneer of the Social Credit economic reform movement.-Education and engineering career:...
's social credit
Social Credit
Social Credit is an economic philosophy developed by C. H. Douglas , a British engineer, who wrote a book by that name in 1924. Social Credit is described by Douglas as "the policy of a philosophy"; he called his philosophy "practical Christianity"...
economic theory. Brownlee believed that Aberhart's proposals would be both unconstitutional (if implemented by a provincial government, which did not have control over monetary policy) and ineffective (since they would not create markets for Alberta's agricultural products). As Aberhart gained popularity, Brownlee attacked his solutions as illusory, but had little of his own to offer but critiques and orthodoxy.
Sex scandal
In 1934, Brownlee was sued for the seduction of Vivian MacMillan, a Brownlee family friend and clerk in the provincial Attorney-General's office. MacMillan alleged that Brownlee had seduced her in 1930 and that the subsequent affair had lasted until 1933; Brownlee denied her story completely and said that the lawsuit was the result of a conspiracy between MacMillan, her fiance, and Brownlee's opponents in the Liberal Party. After a sensational and well-publicized trial, the jury found in MacMillan's favour. However, Justice William Carlos Ives, who presided over the trial, disregarded its finding, ruling that MacMillan had failed to show that she had suffered any damage. Appeals eventually led to the Judicial Committee of the British Privy CouncilJudicial Committee of the Privy Council
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is one of the highest courts in the United Kingdom. Established by the Judicial Committee Act 1833 to hear appeals formerly heard by the King in Council The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) is one of the highest courts in the United...
, at the time Canada's highest court of appeal, where MacMillan emerged victorious.
Once the jury issued its finding, Brownlee realized that his time as Premier was finished. He announced that he would resign as soon as a successor could be found, and on July 10, 1934, was replaced by Richard Gavin Reid
Richard Gavin Reid
Richard Gavin "Dick" Reid was a Canadian politician who served as the sixth Premier of Alberta from 1934 to 1935...
.
Later political career
In the months after his resignation, Brownlee kept a low profile, though he was still MLA for Ponoka. He returned to the public eye with a speech to the January 1935 UFA convention attacking Aberhart's plans to implement social credit in Alberta alone: "I would impress you that nothing but disillusionment, loss of hope and additional despair can follow any attempt to inaugurate a system of that kind, because the Province has no jurisdiction in these matters." Despite hearing directly from Aberhart, the convention defeated by a wide margin a motion to endorse his version of social credit.Reid's government made Brownlee its chief strategist against Aberhart and social credit. One tactic he adopted was C. H. Douglas]] to serve as a consultant to the Alberta government on economic reconstruction. In doing this, Brownlee hoped both to co-opt the promise of social credit for the benefit of the UFA and to discredit Aberhart by demonstrating how widely his interpretation of social credit differed from Douglas's. This effort failed because Albertans, confronted by the contrast between the fiery, charismatic Aberhart and the aloof, technocratic Douglas, preferred the former. Brownlee also invited Aberhart to come to Edmonton and prepare proposals on which the government could act; this was an attempt to force him to take specific positions that could be attacked rather than relying on vague assurances of economic salvation, but was foiled by Aberhart's continued evasiveness.
Brownlee himself toured southern Alberta attacking Aberhart's policies as vague and unconstitutional. In April 1935, he gave a series of radio speeches designed to counter Aberhart's popular radio program, Back to the Bible Hour. When his customary appeals to logic did not work, Brownlee resorted to attacking Aberhart personally, comparing him to the Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the subject of a legend concerning the departure or death of a great many children from the town of Hamelin , Lower Saxony, Germany, in the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in pied clothing, leading the children away from the town never...
. Aberhart did not resist the comparison, retorting that the pied piper had "rid the capitol of all the rats"; Brownlee responded that, after doing that, he had led its children to their destruction. In May 1935, after Aberhart announced that his social credit movement would contest the next provincial election, Brownlee ridiculed its candidate-selection process—in which Aberhart personally interviewed and selected more candidates for each riding than could ultimately run—as one in which the candidates would be "wrapped in cellophane and carefully hidden away so they will not dry out on [Aberhart], until the day he calls out the fittest and discards the rest".
The 1935 election
Alberta general election, 1935
The Alberta general election of 1935 was the eighth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on August 22, 1935 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta....
took place August 22. Brownlee spent most of the campaign trying to retain his own riding of Ponoka. Despite the respect he commanded, his constituents were in desperate economic straits and tired of the UFA's orthodoxy, which had failed to raise their condition. As Brownlee later recalled:
One man got up and said, "Mr. Brownlee, we have listened to you with a great deal of attention and the answers you have given seem pretty hard to meet. But I have one more question…I'm selling my wheat at 25 cents a bushel. If I tried to sell a steer tomorrow I'd probably hardly get enough to pay the freight. I get 3 cents a dozen for eggs. I'm lucky to get a dollar for a can of cream. Will you tell me what I've got to lose?" and a cheer went over the audience. I knew then what the result of the election was going to be.
On election day, every UFA candidate in the province was defeated, as Aberhart's won 56 of 63 seats. In Ponoka, Social Credit's Edith Rogers
Edith Rogers (Alberta politician)
Edith Blanche Rogers was a Canadian politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1935 until 1940. Born in Nova Scotia, she came west to Alberta to accept a job as a teacher...
defeated Brownlee 2,295 votes to 879. John Brownlee's political career was over.
Life after politics
Shortly after his electoral defeat, Brownlee started a new law firm based in Edmonton. The United Grain Growers soon re-appointed him as their general counsel. By 1940, Brownlee had restored his career to it position before he entered politics: his firm counted a number of major agricultural companies among its clients, and the UGG too brought him considerable work. He was also hired to write a legal column for the Western Review newspaper.In his capacity as UGG general counsel, Brownlee was responsible for its restructuring. Its bylaws provided that only farmers could buy shares directly from the company, but placed no limitation on who could buy them from other shareholders. This had the effect of limiting capital inflow, since few farmers could afford to buy shares during the depression, and transferring control of the company to non-farmers, who were purchasing shares from impoverished farmers. Brownlee's solution was to create two classes of share: an investment share with a par value of $20, and a voting share with a par value of $5. The former could be held by any person, to a maximum of 250 shares per person, while the latter could be held only by farmers, to a maximum of 25 shares per person.
UGG director and vice president
When he restructured the UGG's capital, Brownlee included a rider that non-farmers who held shares at the time the new structure came into effect could hold voting shares. This clause allowed him to do so, and in consequence to be elected to the company's board of directors at the 1942 annual shareholders' meeting; he was also appointed the UGG's vice president.At the time of Brownlee's appointment, the UGG was embroiled in an income tax
Income tax
An income tax is a tax levied on the income of individuals or businesses . Various income tax systems exist, with varying degrees of tax incidence. Income taxation can be progressive, proportional, or regressive. When the tax is levied on the income of companies, it is often called a corporate...
dispute. Though the farmers' movement had generally supported the 1917 introduction of income tax, as rates climbed the UGG began to resent it, especially given that the pools were exempt. While the rationale for this exemption—that the pools were agents of their members, and that any income should therefore be taxed as personal income once disbursed, and not as corporate income pre-disbursal—was initially accepted, the UGG argued that the pools' 1931 reorganization eliminated the differences between them and the UGG, and that the exemption thus put the UGG at a competitive disadvantage. In 1941, Brownlee travelled to Ottawa to express the UGG's case; there he collaborated with O. M. Biggar, representing the private grain companies in the form of the North-West Line Elevators Association (NLEA), who also objected to the pools' exemption, on a joint brief to the Minister of National Revenue. The government ruled that the pools were taxable; the pools appealed to the Exchequer Court, which found in the government's favour in 1943. By this time, the government had agreed not to tax the pools for pre-1941 revenue and to grant generous exemptions on taxation thereafter.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the federal government appointed the Royal Commission on Taxation of Cooperatives to examine the question in greater detail. Brownlee prepared the UGG's submission, and was pleased with the Commission's eventual findings: it recognized the UGG as a cooperative, and recommended that it be granted the same exemptions as the pools enjoyed. However, the government still intended to collect taxes from 1940 and 1941 from the UGG, but not from the pools. In February 1947, Brownlee returned to Ottawa to present the UGG's case to Finance Minister Douglas Abbott
Douglas Abbott
Douglas Charles Abbott, PC was a Canadian Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister. He was born in Lennoxville, Quebec. A member of the Liberal Party of Canada, Abbott served as both Minister of National Defence and Minister of Finance...
, who eventually sided with the UGG and extended the pools' exemption to it.
The acrimony this dispute engendered between the pools and the UGG led the former to suggest that the latter was not a true cooperative, but rather an old-style grain company. Brownlee played a major role in disputing these allegations, and was a major contributor to The Grain Growers' Record 1906–1943, the UGG's written response. When he, as the UGG's delegate to the Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Canadian Federation of Agriculture
The Canadian Federation of Agriculture is Canada's largest general farm organization, representing 200,000 farmers and farm families. The organization is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, with the mandate to provide a unified industry voice at the national level...
, opposed a resolution calling for the continued tax-exempt status of pools, the resolution's proponents suggested stating that it was "endorsed by the cooperatives"; Brownlee objected that the UGG was a cooperative, and the wording was withdrawn. The Alberta Wheat Pool later published a pamphlet entitled A History of Events Leading to Taxation of Cooperatives, which placed much of the blame on the UGG and Brownlee, accusing the latter of working with the hated private grain companies to "enforce taxation of the Wheat Pools". Seizing on an incorrect date in the pamphlet, Brownlee dismissed the charges—which were substantially true, in light of his 1941 joint brief with Biggar—as factually incorrect. Though UGG shareholders subjected him to vigorous questioning, he held firm and the controversy died down after he gave a series of radio addresses in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
UGG President
In the mid 1940s, UGG President and General Manager R. S. Law fell ill, and in February 1947, Brownlee was named the UGG's Acting General Manager. On January 1, 1948, he became full General Manager. In spring 1948 Law stepped down completely, and on May 1 Brownlee succeeded him as President and General Manager.In this capacity, he had offices in Calgary and Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...
. He worked constantly, often arriving at work on a Monday with a briefcase full of dictation machine
Dictation machine
A dictation machine is a sound recording device most commonly used to record speech for later playback or to be typed into print. It includes digital voice recorders and tape recorders....
recordings for secretaries to transcribe. Foster says that Brownlee was known by his staff as "a man whose life was his work, who lived in his briefcase, and whose only recreation seemed to be changing from one job to another".
He turned this work ethic to expanding the company, building new grain elevators and purchasing existing ones. At the same time, he undertook a study of the operating costs and volume of each of the UGG's delivery points. He found that roughly a dozen elevators were losing money, with climbing costs threatening to increase this number. Brownlee tried to reach accommodations with the UGG's competitors to divide among them centres too small to support more than one elevator, and achieved some success, especially with the Alberta Wheat Pool. At the same time, Brownlee increased the UGG's presence in larger centres, especially Regina
Regina, Saskatchewan
Regina is the capital city of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The city is the second-largest in the province and a cultural and commercial centre for southern Saskatchewan. It is governed by Regina City Council. Regina is the cathedral city of the Roman Catholic and Romanian Orthodox...
, Brandon
Brandon, Manitoba
Brandon is the second largest city in Manitoba, Canada, and is located in the southwestern area of the province. Brandon is the largest city in the Westman region of Manitoba. The city is located along the Assiniboine River. Spruce Woods Provincial Park and CFB Shilo are a relatively short distance...
, and Winnipeg.
Brownlee remained intimately involved in the grain industry even outside the UGG, in part through his position on the Canadian Federation of Agriculture executive. In this capacity, he found himself in the middle of a controversy over the British Wheat Agreement (BWA). The BWA was an agreement to sell wheat to British clients at a fixed price over a four-year period. The price was to be adjusted during the following two years, "having regard to" world wheat prices. During the first four years, world wheat prices were continually above the price stipulated in the agreement, breeding resentment towards the British, especially since they sold much of this fixed price wheat for a large profit in European markets. This was exacerbated when the British refused to adjust the price upwards for the last two years, on the grounds that there was nothing in the agreement to compel them to do so. The result was considerable ill will and a loss by grain farmers of an estimated $350 million. The federal government, which had negotiated the agreement, offered to supplement the British payments by $65 million, a sum large enough to raise the ire of eastern Canadians but too small to placate western farmers. Brownlee, who had opposed the agreement, authorized a purchase of advertising across the country pointing out that the government fixed the domestic price of wheat at $0.77 per bushel while the world price reached as high as $2.18. In Brownlee's view, the $65 million payment by the government paled in comparison to the benefit to consumers of the federal policy. Subsequent international agreements, for which Brownlee acted as an advisor to the Canadian delegation, resulted in more favourable terms for farmers. Brownlee's continued status as one of the grain industry's leading figures was also exhibited by his involvement in government relations. He appeared before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture to oppose a system of allocating box cars to each grain elevator by formula, favouring instead a system whereby the Canadian Wheat Board
Canadian Wheat Board
The Canadian Wheat Board was established by the Parliament of Canada on 5 July 1935 as a mandatory producer marketing system for wheat and barley in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and a small part of British Columbia...
retained the flexibility to assign them as it saw fit. In his September 1960 submission to the Royal Commission on Transportation, In Defense of the Crow's Nest Pass Rates, he rejected the railways' calls to deregulate the rates they charged for the shipment of grain.
Brownlee's presidency coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Grain Growers Grain Company, one of the UGG's founding organizations. In celebration of the event, Brownlee travelled around the country speaking to UGG outlets. He also oversaw the publication, and wrote much, of The First Fifty Years, a history of the UGG to that point. In this capacity, he came into conflict with UGG Vice President R. C. Brown, in charge of the UGG department that published the book, and Assistant General Manager P. C. Watt. Brownlee had an interventionist style as President, which Foster acknowledged sometimes "verged on outright interference". As the years wore on, his decision-making became more autocratic, with the board of directors expected to serve as a rubber stamp.
On June 21, 1961, ill health forced Brownlee's resignation from the UGG.
Later political activities
Brownlee never sought political office after his 1935 defeat, and commented publicly on political issues only rarely. His distaste for Aberhart's social credit government—and in particular its contention, which Brownlee viewed as unfair, that the UFA had left the government bankrupt—did not prevent him from advising it behind the scenes on a number of issues, most notably Alberta's submission to the Rowell-Sirois CommissionRowell-Sirois Commission
The Rowell-Sirois Commission officially known as the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations was a Canadian Royal Commission looking into the Canadian economy and federal-provincial relations. It was called in 1937 and reported in 1940....
, The Case for Alberta.
In the early 1940s, he met M. J. Coldwell
Major James Coldwell
Major James William Coldwell, , usually known as M.J. , was a Canadian social democratic politician, and leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation party from 1942 to 1960. He was born in England, and immigrated to Canada in 1910...
, the new federal leader of the CCF, on a train. According to Coldwell, in the ensuing conversation Brownlee indicated that he would be prepared to consider running federally as a CCF candidate. Coldwell excitedly reported this to some of the CCF's Alberta leaders; one of them telephoned Brownlee to question whether Coldwell's report was true. Brownlee adhered to a conservative view of how politics should be conducted, and was perhaps put off by the audacious telephone call; despite an apology from Coldwell, Brownlee did not indicate any further interest in running for the CCF.
Brownlee's occasional public comments on political issues still attracted considerable attention. He spoke to the 1944 UFA convention on post-war reconstruction, and expressed pessimism about Canada's economic prospects. He advocated a policy of full employment
Full employment
In macroeconomics, full employment is a condition of the national economy, where all or nearly all persons willing and able to work at the prevailing wages and working conditions are able to do so....
, and emphasized that jobs had to be meaningful rather than "put[ting] men to work building roads like coolies in China when machines can do it better". He criticized the government-imposed wartime ceiling on wheat prices, of $1.25 per bushel, as forcing farmers to shoulder an unfair burden of a national crisis, as they had during the depression.
Personal life
Brownlee's father had died in January 1934, while the MacMillan suit was still pending. In April 1941, Christina too died. She died intestate and left an estate of $1,507. Brownlee relinquished any claim on the estate in favour of his sister, who had cared for their mother in her last years.Brownlee's sons became successful at their careers: Alan graduated from law at the University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...
and joined his father's firm, which was renamed Brownlee, Baldwin and Brownlee, while John studied photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
and returned to Canada to work as a photographer. Both married and had children. In time, Brownlee relinquished the law firm—now Brownlee and Brownlee—to Alan, and returned to Calgary, where he and his wife led a quiet, reserved life. When Calgary planners announced their intention to widen Memorial Drive, where the Brownlees lived, several residents expressed concern that the plan would destroy the street's trees; they consulted Brownlee, who telephoned the mayor and saved the trees.
In his last years, Brownlee received a number of honours. Premier of Manitoba
Premier of Manitoba
The Premier of Manitoba is the first minister for the Canadian province of Manitoba. He or she is the province's head of government and de facto chief executive. Until the early 1970s, the title "Prime Minister of Manitoba" was used frequently. Afterwards, the word Premier, derived from the French...
Duff Roblin inducted him into the province's Order of the Buffalo Hunt in November 1960, in recognition of his contributions to the prairie provinces. The UFA awarded him an honorary life membership, and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
John Diefenbaker
John George Diefenbaker, PC, CH, QC was the 13th Prime Minister of Canada, serving from June 21, 1957, to April 22, 1963...
appointed him to the National Productivity Council, though ill health prevented him from participating after its inaugural March 1961 meeting.
Beginning in June 1957, Brownlee underwent a series of major surgeries. By this time his memory was failing, and he often had to ask his wife for details that escaped him. He died July 15, 1961, two weeks after resigning from the UGG board and barely three after resigning as President.
Legacy
As Premier, Brownlee is most remembered for the sex scandal that ended his career; his accomplishments are largely forgotten. Despite this, he is highly regarded by historians: Foster calls him "Alberta's greatest premier", citing in particular his successful negotiations for the transfer of resource rights to the provincial government as the cause of Alberta's subsequent prosperity. Journalist Ted ByfieldTed Byfield
Edward Bartlett "Ted" Byfield is a conservative Canadian journalist, publisher and editor. He founded the Alberta Report and Western Report newsmagazines.Born in Toronto, Byfield moved with his parents to Washington, D.C. at the age of 17...
concurs, noting that his willingness to confront the federal government sets him apart from Ernest Manning
Ernest Manning
Ernest Charles Manning, , a Canadian politician, was the eighth Premier of Alberta between 1943 and 1968 for the Social Credit Party of Alberta. He served longer than any premier in the province's history, and was the second longest serving provincial premier in Canadian history...
, another contender for the title. In 1980, the Edmonton Journal
Edmonton Journal
The Edmonton Journal is a daily newspaper in Edmonton, Alberta. It is part of the Postmedia Network.-History:The Journal was founded in 1903 by three local businessmen — John Macpherson, Arthur Moore and J.W. Cunningham — as a rival to Alberta's first newspaper, the 23-year-old...
wrote that "[t]he lasting political estate left by former Premier John Brownlee has made Alberta what it is today, one of Canada's wealthiest provinces fuelled by billions of dollars in oil and gas royalties." A University of Calgary
University of Calgary
The University of Calgary is a public research university located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1966 the U of C is composed of 14 faculties and more than 85 research institutes and centres.More than 25,000 undergraduate and 5,500 graduate students are currently...
undergraduate seminar in 2005 ranked Brownlee as the province's third greatest premier, behind Manning and Peter Lougheed
Peter Lougheed
Edgar Peter Lougheed, PC, CC, AOE, QC, is a Canadian lawyer, and a former politician and Canadian Football League player. He served as the tenth Premier of Alberta from 1971 to 1985....
.
Brownlee's impact is also felt through the organizations he participated in founding: the Alberta Wheat Pool remained an important player in Canadian agriculture until 1998, when it merged with Manitoba Pool Elevators to form Agricore Cooperative Ltd.. In 2001, this new company merged with the UGG to form Agricore United
Agricore United
Agricore United was a farmer-directed agri-business in Canada. It supplied crop nutrition and crop protection products, and offered grain handling and marketing services. It was created on November 1, 2001 by the merger of Agricore and United Grain Growers. It was headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba...
. In 2007, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool
Saskatchewan Wheat Pool
The Saskatchewan Wheat Pool was a grain handling, agri-food processing and marketing company based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Pool created a network of marketing alliances in North America and internationally which made it the largest agricultural grain handling operation in the province of...
took it over, forming Viterra
Viterra
Viterra Inc. is a leading global agri-business with extensive operations in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. With a growing international presence that includes trading and marketing offices on four continents, Viterra delivers high quality nutritious food ingredients to more...
. Brownlee's vision, unique among the members of the Macmillan Commission, of a publicly controlled central bank became a reality in 1938, when the Bank of Canada
Bank of Canada
The Bank of Canada is Canada's central bank and "lender of last resort". The Bank was created by an Act of Parliament on July 3, 1934 as a privately owned corporation. In 1938, the Bank became a Crown corporation belonging to the Government of Canada...
shifted from private to government control.
Brownlee was buried at Evergreen Memorial Gardens near Edmonton. The provincial government's John E. Brownlee Building in Edmonton is named in his honour, as is the University of Alberta Faculty of Law's John E. Brownlee Memorial Prize in Local Government Law.
As party leader
| 1930 Alberta provincial election Alberta general election, 1930 The Alberta general election of 1930 was the seventh general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 19, 1930 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.... |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Party Leader | # of candidates |
Seats | Popular Vote | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1926 Alberta general election, 1926 The Alberta general election of 1926 was the sixth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 28, 1926 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The writs of election were issued on May 10, 1926 allowing for an election period of 40 days.After Herbert... |
Elected | % Change | # | % | % Change |
United Farmers United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary... |
|
47 | 43 | 39 | -9.3% | 74,187 | 39.41% | -0.27% |
Liberal Alberta Liberal Party The Alberta Liberal Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Originally founded in 1905, when the province was created, it was the dominant political party until 1921 when it was defeated. It has never been in government since that time... |
George Harry Webster George Harry "Cowboy Mayor" Webster was a politician and transportation expert in Alberta, Canada... |
36 | 7 | 11 | +57.1% | 46,275 | 24.59% | -1.58% |
Conservative | David Milwyn Duggan David Milwyn Duggan was a politician in Alberta, Canada, a mayor of Edmonton, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta, and a leader of the Conservative Party of Alberta.-Early life:... |
18 | 5 | 6 | +20.0% | 27,954 | 14.85% | -7.25% |
Labor | Fred J. White Frederic "Fred" James White was a provincial level politician and labour activist in Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1921 to 1935 holding a seat in the electoral district of Calgary.... |
11 | 5 | 4 | -20.0% | 14,354 | 7.63% | -0.16% |
Communist Communist Party (Alberta) Communist Party – Alberta is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. It is a provincial branch of the Communist Party of Canada.-History:... |
|
1 | Independent | 28 | - | 3 | 25,449 | 13.52% | +12.82% | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Total | 141 | 61 | 63 | +3.3% | 188,219 | 100% | |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1926 Alberta provincial election Alberta general election, 1926 The Alberta general election of 1926 was the sixth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 28, 1926 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The writs of election were issued on May 10, 1926 allowing for an election period of 40 days.After Herbert... |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Party | Party Leader | # of candidates |
Seats | Popular Vote | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 1921 Alberta general election, 1921 The Alberta general election of 1921 was the fifth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on July 18, 1921 to elect members to the 5th Alberta Legislative Assembly.... |
Elected | % Change | # | % | % Change |
United Farmers United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary... |
|
46 | 38 | 43 | +13.2% | 71,967 | 39.68% | +10.76% |
Liberal Alberta Liberal Party The Alberta Liberal Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Originally founded in 1905, when the province was created, it was the dominant political party until 1921 when it was defeated. It has never been in government since that time... |
Joseph Tweed Shaw Joseph Tweed Shaw was a Canadian politician. He served in the Canadian House of Commons from 1921 to 1925 as an independent Member of Parliament , and later became leader of the Alberta Liberal Party.-Early life:... |
54 | 15 | 7 | -36.4% | 47,450 | 26.17% | -7.90% |
Labour | |
12 | 4 | 5 | +25.0% | 14,123 | 7.79% | -3.25% |
Conservative | Alexander McGillivray (Alberta politician) Alexander Andrew McGillivray was a lawyer and provincial level politician from Alberta, Canada. He served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the electoral district of Calgary from 1926 to 1930... |
56 | - | 4 | 40,091 | 22.10% | +11.12% |
Independent Labour | 1 | - | 1 | 2,467 | 1.37% | -1.69% |
Independent Liberal | 5 | - | - | 2,728 | 1.51% | 1.02% |
Independent | 3 | 4 | - | -100% | 1,254 | 0.70% | -8.96% |
Independent UFA | 5 | - | 999 | 0.55% | |
Liberal Progressive Liberal-Progressive Liberal-Progressive was a label used by a number of candidates in Canadian elections between 1926 and 1953. In federal and Ontario politics, there was no formal Liberal-Progressive party, but it was an alliance between two separate parties... |
|
1 | - | 252 | 0.13% | ||||||||||||
| Total | 183 | 61 | 60 | - | 181,331 | 100% | |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
As MLA
| 1935 Alberta general election Alberta general election, 1935 The Alberta general election of 1935 was the eighth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on August 22, 1935 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.... results (Ponoka Ponoka (provincial electoral district) Ponoka was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of Alberta represented in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1905 to 1986.-History:... ) |
font style="font-size: 90%;">Turnout N.A. | |||||||
| Social Credit | Edith Rogers Edith Rogers (Alberta politician) Edith Blanche Rogers was a Canadian politician who served as a member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1935 until 1940. Born in Nova Scotia, she came west to Alberta to accept a job as a teacher... |
2,295 | 59.3% |
United Farmers of Alberta United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary... |
John Edward Brownlee | 879 | 22.7% |
Liberal Alberta Liberal Party The Alberta Liberal Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Originally founded in 1905, when the province was created, it was the dominant political party until 1921 when it was defeated. It has never been in government since that time... |
Robert McLaren | 696 | 18.0% |
| 1930 Alberta general election Alberta general election, 1930 The Alberta general election of 1930 was the seventh general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 19, 1930 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta.... results (Ponoka Ponoka (provincial electoral district) Ponoka was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of Alberta represented in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1905 to 1986.-History:... ) |
font style="font-size: 90%;">Turnout N/A | |||||||
| Affiliation | Candidate | Votes | % |
United Farmers of Alberta United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary... |
John Edward Brownlee | Acclaimed | ||
| 1926 Alberta general election Alberta general election, 1926 The Alberta general election of 1926 was the sixth general election for the Province of Alberta, Canada. It was held on June 28, 1926 to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. The writs of election were issued on May 10, 1926 allowing for an election period of 40 days.After Herbert... results (Ponoka Ponoka (provincial electoral district) Ponoka was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of Alberta represented in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1905 to 1986.-History:... ) |
font style="font-size: 90%;">Turnout N.A. | |||||||
| United Farmers of Alberta United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary... |
John Edward Brownlee | 1,357 | 62.9% |
Liberal Alberta Liberal Party The Alberta Liberal Party is a provincial political party in Alberta, Canada. Originally founded in 1905, when the province was created, it was the dominant political party until 1921 when it was defeated. It has never been in government since that time... |
Marcus Crandell | 453 | 21.0% |
Conservative Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta The Progressive Conservative Association of Alberta is a provincial centre-right party in the Canadian province of Alberta... |
Arthur Beaumont | 347 | 16.1% |
| 1921 by-election results (Ponoka Ponoka (provincial electoral district) Ponoka was a provincial electoral district in the Canadian province of Alberta represented in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1905 to 1986.-History:... ) |
font style="font-size: 90%;">Turnout N/A | |||||||
| Affiliation | Candidate | Votes | % |
United Farmers of Alberta United Farmers of Alberta The United Farmers of Alberta is an association of Alberta farmers that has served many different roles throughout its history as a lobby group, a political party, and as a farm-supply retail chain. Since 1934 it has primarily been an agricultural supply cooperative headquartered in Calgary... |
John Edward Brownlee | Acclaimed | ||