CANADA'S NEW PREMIER

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 45, 19 September 1930, Page 3

CANADA'S NEW PREMIER

MR. BENNETT AND HIS CAREER. LAW AND POLITICS OTTAWA, August 3. The Governor-General of Canada has invited the Hon. Richard B. Bennett to form an Administration. For nine years the Canadian Conservative Party have been in Opposition. Following the elections of Monday last, they have now a majority of well over thirty over all other parties combined. Three years ago the Conservatives were in a bewildered state, and practically without a leader. A party convention was held in Winnipeg, the largest of its kind ever held in Canada. There were several candidates for the leadership, but probably there w/;re few delegates who were not persuaded from the start that, judged solely on the score of intellectual ability and force of character, R. B. Bennett stood well above his rivals. After two ballots Mr. Bennett was unanimously chosen. The first to wire his congratulations was Mr. Mackenzie King, with whom Mr. Bennett will now change places as Prime Minister. Mr. Bennett reached his sixtieth birthday a month ago. Like many other eminent men of affairs in Canada past and present, he owns one of the Maritime Provinces as his birthplace. He is of United Empire Loyalist descent on both sides. His father and his grandfather built wooden ships up to 1500 tons at Hopewell Cape, on the shore of New Brunswick. The era of wooden ships was closing, however, when R. B. Bennett was a lad, and in any event his own mind was set upon book-learning. At seventeen he became a school teacher. After school hours he read law in the office in Chatham, N. 8., of L. J. Tweedle, some time Lieutenant-Governor and Prime Minister of the Province. Another youth, somewhat younger than Bennett, graduated at Dalhousie, and the firm then became Tweedie and Bennett. The junior partner, then as now, was a teetotaler and a non-smoker. Then, as now, he had no thought of marrying. The only recreation he was ever known to take was in the way of still more reading. He was reserved as well as studious, but some of the friendships he did cultivate bore remarkable results years later.

The Rise To Fortune. It was a fine opportunity for the quiet young lawyer when, in 1897, Senator Sir James Lougheed, solicitor to the Canadian Pacific Railway, offered him a share in his law business in Calgary. In the year of the diamond jubilee this town of the prairies was just springing gaily to its feet. R. B. Bennett prospered there from the start, and became known as'a man'of affairs throughout the West. In less than a year he was a member of the Legislative Assmbly—the Province of Alberta was not then created. He was already a wealthy man when a fortune of several millions of dollars came to him from a certain brother and sister, with whom he had established a devoted friendship in his early days in Eastern Canada. His entry into Federal politics began when he was returned for Calgary in the "Reciprocity" election of 1911, when the Conservatives were swept into power under the leadership of Sir Robert Borden. There was something of uneasiness among the party leaders, however, when they welcomed Bennett at Ottawa, with the predominant position he held among the men of big business there also went a certain independence in his line of political thought. In consequence, Mr. Bennett's relations with the elder brethren of his own side were not always quite smooth. All the same, his independence engendered common respect for his sincerity. For a portion of the war period Mr. Bennett was Director of National Service. When Sir Robert Borden resigned he took office under Mr. Arthur Meighen as Minister of Finance, but the Ministry did not last long and Conservative fortunes were at a low ebb when the convention was held three years ago. "A Jealous Mistress." Mr. Bennett made a striking speech in acknowledging his election to the leadership. "It has been said, and not improperly, that I am a man of wealth. It is true. But I got it by untiring efforts in this great Western land, to which I owe so much. What is more, I look on it as a solemn trust in my hands, to enable me to serve my country without fear or regard to the future so far as money is concerned. No man may serve you as he should if he has over his shoulder always the shadow of pecuniary obligations and liabilities." Immediately after his election he withdrew from most of his directorates.