R. B. BENNETT

Hokitika Guardian, 4 August 1930, Page 2

R. B. BENNETT

CANADA’S NEW PREMIER, The Hon Richard Bedford Bennett, leader of the Conservative Party in Canada that lias defeated the Liberal (Government at the election this week, though a westerner by residence was born in New Brunswick. For thirty years Mr Bennett has been a leading figure in the great producing provinces, and for that period Calgary, his headquarters, has been utterly loyal to him He will bring to the Prime Ministership a long experience of public life and knowledge of a wide range of

subjects which have brought him into contact with men from all parts of Canada. The characteristics of the man have been energy and consistency. Whatever task he has undertaken he lias striven to accomplish to the utmost of his powers. In 1897 he arrived in that thoroughly western city of Calgary, the last of the prinrie towns within sight of the Rooky Mountains, and there settled down to the practice of the law. Most of that time he was the partner of the late Sir James Lougheed,, one of the pioneers of that country, brother-in-law of the first Lord Stra.thconn, and former leader of the Conservative Party in the Senate at Ottawa. Today Mr Bennett has probably the largest legal practice between Winnipeg and the Pacific Coast, but that is but a mere fraction of his interests.

On going to Calgary he immediately embarked on a career in polities, He was then elected a member cf the Legislature of the old North-West Territories, which then included the future provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan! He sat as a member till 1905, when, on the formation of the new provinces, a different system of government was set- up. Calgary’s loyalty to the Couservtive Party and it s future leader cost it much, for the. seat of the new Provincial Government was placed in the City of Edmonton, further to the north. In the new Provincial Legislature Mr Bennett sat as a member till in 1911 he entered the larger field of Federal politics. .

During the war he was one of the most .devoted of Canadians. No one pan estimate fully the noble work which bp did as Director-General of National Service in securing men to fill up the Canadian contingent in the army oversea. He worked strenuously till .t]ie heavy losses in France pnd the absence of further voluntary enlistments made the Military Service Act and conscription necessary. Mr Benpett did not become a Cabinet Minister till 1921, when he was called on by M'r Meighen to be Minister of Justice and Attorney-General. He again held office in the ill-fated Meighen Ministry.

Like two of the other leading figures in Canadian public life, Mr Mackenzie, King, the defeated Prime Minister, and Mr E. W. Beatty, the president of; the Canadian Pacific Railway, Mr Bennett is a bachelor.