"BONFIRE BENNETT”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1037, 30 July 1930, Page 9

"BONFIRE BENNETT”

RANCH-BOY'S AMBITION NOW FULFILLED CANADA’S PRIME MINISTER Fifty years ago in Hopewell Cape. New Brunswick, a sleepy forgotten village of some 200 people, perched on the muddy, tide-driven shores of the Bay of Fundy, “Dicky” Bennett told his schoolmates that some day he was going to be Prime Minister of Canada. This barefoot boy, who began on a remote farm, is today arranging the members of Canada's new Ministry whom he will lead into the Government next week. Mr. R. B. Bennett, the Prime Minis-ter-elect, has been solicitor and counsel for the Canadian Pacific Railways for many years. In verbal facility he has no rival in Canada. His appearance makes shorthand reporters writhe in their seats. He has been “clocked" at 220 words a minute. At one time be bore the nickname of “Bonfire” BennettMarked as his rhetorical ability, some of Mr. Bennett's other qualifications arg even more promising. His is a fighter, a man of belligerency rather than compromise. Moreover he is a human dynamo in energy. The prediction that he would bring new life into the dry bones of the Conservative Party has been fulfilled. Mr. Bennett was born in 1870. He came into the party leadership at the age of 57. He began life as a schoolteacher and afterward took to law, in which he has been very successful. He became known as the most eminent lawyer west of the Great Lakes and got his full share of the big retainer fees. Almost immediately after Mr. Bennett reached Calgary he was elected a member of the Legislature of what was then the North-West Territories. He also sat in the Legislature of the newly organised Province of Alberta, and in 1911 he reached Ottawa as a member of the House of Commons. With brief interruption he has represented Calgary in the House of Commons ever since. He attained Cabinet rank, bnt much later than Mr. A. Meighan, his contemporary and rival from the’ West. ~ At Ottawa Mr. Bennett found his boyhood friends. Harry Shirreft and his sister, Jennie Shirreff. now Mrs. Eddy, and presently the legatee of the estate of Mr. E. B. Eddy, millionaire pulp and paper manufacturer, of Hull. Quebec. In 1921. when Mrs. Eddy died, she bequeathed 1.007 of the closely-held and enormously valuable shares of the E. B. Eddy Company to her brother Harry, and 600 shares to Mr. Bennett. In May of 1927 Harry Shirreff also died, and his will was found to bequeath his shares also to Mr. Bennett, thus giving him control of the company. The Bennett holdings in the Eddy Company alone are now said to hare a value estimated anywhere at from one to two millions sterling. DEFEATED LEADER The RL Hon. W L. Mackenzie King, the defeated Prime Minister, was born in 1874 in Berlin, now Kitchener. Ontario. He was educated at Toronto University, and was a most brilliant student. In August. 1919, on the death of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, Mr. King became leader of the Canadian Liberal Party and was elected to Parliament, where, from 1919 to 1921, he led the Opposition. At the elections in December, 1921, the Liberals secured a majority and Mr. King formed a Cabinet in which he was Foreign Minister as well as Prime Minister. In 1925 Mr. King resigned and was defeated at the ensuing election. His party remained in power, however, and subsequently he secured re-elec-tion at a by-election and resumed the Prime Ministership with a doubtful majority until he resigned again in June, 1926. He was returned to power again at the ensuing election.