Meighan was born in Anderson, ON in 1874, went to the University of Toronto where he studied mathematics then Osgood Hall Law School where he earned his degree. He then moved to Manitoba where after taking stabs at teaching and business, he entered politics as a conservative. After entering parliament in 1908 he served as Solicitor General and then was appointed Minister of Mines, then Secretary of State for Canada. He was charged with directing the conscription for the first world war, as well as the disenfranchisement of those who were members of groups thought to oppose the war.
When Borden resigned in 1920, Meighan succeeded him as prime minister, and served out the rest of his mandate, but was defeated in the general elections of the next year by Liberal leader William Lyon Mackenzie King.
11. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1921-1926) Liberal Party.
The longest-serving prime minister so far in Canadian History, King was born in what in what is now known as Kitchener, ON in 1874. It was a town named Berlin until the great war, the name, owing the anti-German sentiment, was changed. His grandfather had been mayor of Toronto at one time, and his father was a lawyer. Like Meighan he went to Osgood Hall Law School and knew him there. They were not friends, however.
He got involved in the settlement house movement, which was a social welfare movement where more educated and advantaged people were encouraged to work with the poor and try to inculcate in them values which would allow them to rise out of poverty. Having a scholarly bent, he went to Chicago to study at the University of Chicago, and for a time as worked with Jane Addams in her settlement house. From the University of Chicago he went on the Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. in political economy, where he wrote a thesis titled "Oriental Immigration to Canada". He was not in favor of Asians in Canada, arguing that Canada should, for economic, social, as well political and national reasons, restrict their immigration.
For these efforts he was considered an expert on immigration and was appointed deputy minister of labour in the Laurier government. He worked in this capacity for the involvement of government in labour disputes and in anti-trust and anti-competitive legislation. When the Borden government came in he lost his seat in parliament and got a job as a director with the Rockefeller foundation in New York where he led the department of industrial research.
In 1918 he returned to Canadian politics, and when Laurier died in 1919 he became leader of the Liberal party and in 1921 became Prime Minister. His first term as prime minister he barely held a majority in parliament, with the Conservatives in third place behind the new Progressive Party. The Progressives, strong in the Western provinces, were only partially supportive of King, owing to their favoring of lower tariffs. King's party on the other hand was opposed to lowering tariffs too much as it would alienate his industrial constituencies in Eastern Canada.
King declined to aid the British in the Chanak Crisis, involving Turkey threatening the British holding of the Dardanelles, saying that the Canadian parliament would have to decided whether aid was forthcoming. This led to to greater independence among the British commonwealth nations in their foreign policy, formerly handled previously through London.
In 1925 he won another narrow victory for a second term. To avoid a vote of no confidence he asked Governor-General Lord Byng, the British government's representative in Canada for permission to dissolve parliament and hold elections. This Byng refused, and instead invited Meighan, the leader of the opposition to form a government instead.
12. Arthur Meighan (1926) Conservative Party.
Meighan formed a government which only lasted a few months when invited to form one by Governor-General Byng. Mackenzie King characterized this decision as showing favoritism and interfering in Canadian politics. King was vindicated when he won a clear majority for the Liberals in the 1926 elections that September.
13. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1926-1930) Liberal Party.
When the great depression began in the fall of 1929, King's slow response to the crisis led to his defeat in elections in 1930 by the Conservatives.
14. R.B. Bennett (1930-1935) Conservative Party.
Bennett was born in 1870 in Hopewell Hill, NB. and earned his law degree from Dalhousie University. He became close friends with Max Aitken who eventually became the immensely wealthy newspaper publisher, Lord Beaverbrook. As a corporate lawyer he had a very successful practice both in Nova Scotia and later in Alberta. In 1911 he was elected to parliament. He served as Minister of Justice under Meighen, and when Meighen resigned as party leader, Bennet took over in 1927. In 1930, in the depths of the great depression he became prime minister.
His strategy for boosting the Canadian economy was to increase tariffs on non-commonwealth nations and encourage trade with other Commonwealth nations. This did not have much effect and his own great wealth and lack of a common touch did not help him politically.
Radical left wing political groups flourished during the great depression and were seen by Bennett as a threat to Canadian institutions. As a result the Section 98 criminal code came into being, which enabled more vigorous suppression of groups and individuals identified as subversive. This was in response to the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919 and similar events.
Later, in imitation of the "New Deal" put forward by US President Franklin Roosevelt, Bennett put forth a plan for a progressive income tax, minimum wages, maximum weekly work hours, health insurance, old age pensions, and unemployment insurance, but by 1935 the Canadian voters had tired of his efforts and he was defeated by Mackenzie King's Liberals that year. While many of these efforts were struck down by the courts, his creation of the Bank of Canada in 1934 remains as part of his legacy.
15. William Lyon MacKenzie King (1935-1948) Liberal Party.
With the approach of war with Germany, King actually met with Hitler in 1937 and was not especially supportive of Britain's efforts to counteract Hitler, saying at one point that he would support Britain only if they were directly attacked. Nor was he especially welcoming of Jewish refugees from Europe and along with Cuba, and US, denied sanctuary to 900 such persons on the MS St. Louis in 1939.
While Canada did enter the war with Germany when Britain entered in September 1939, it wasn't automatic, as it had been with the first war. King waited a week and a parliamentary debate before Canada entered on the side of Great Britain. (Of course it was a little over two years later before the US entered the war, when Japan attacked the US, and Germany declared war on the US.)
Again as with the First World War, there was a problem with manpower needs which led to the introduction of conscription, but with limitations of the theatre of conflict. King had to play a balancing game between the Canadian isolationists until after the Liberals were returned to parliament in 1940. Even then, it was mostly volunteers and not conscripts who were sent overseas from Canada.
During the war, King's government in Canada, like the US, chose to intern large numbers of Japanese Canadians as a security risk.
After the war King helped to found the United Nations, and discontinued wartime censorship. He called elections in 1945 and was returned to power, though only formed a Liberal dominated government as a coalition. In 1948 he retired from public life and the Liberals chose Louis St. Laurent as his successor. King died in 1950.
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