Angus Lewis Macdonald

For other uses, see Angus Macdonald.

Angus L. Macdonald
Public Archives of Nova Scotia.
19th Premier of Nova Scotia
In office September 5, 1933 – July 10 1940
Preceded by	Gordon Harrington
Succeeded by	Alexander S. MacMillan
21st Premier of Nova Scotia
In office September 8, 1945 – April 13, 1954
Preceded by	Alexander S. MacMillan
Succeeded by	Harold Connolly
Personal details
Born	August 10, 1890 Dunvegan, Nova Scotia
Died	April 13, 1954 (age 63) Halifax, Nova Scotia
Political party	Liberal
Spouse	Agnes Foley

Angus L. Macdonald, PC (August 10, 1890 - April 13 1954) was a Nova Scotia lawyer, law professor and politician. He served as the Liberal premier of Nova Scotia from 1933 to 1940 when he became the federal minister of defence for naval services. He oversaw the creation of an effective Canadian navy and Allied convoy service during World War Two. After the war, he returned to Nova Scotia to become premier again. In the election of 1945, his Liberals swept back into power while their main rivals the Conservatives failed to win a single seat. The Liberal rallying cry, "All's Well With Angus L." seemed so convincing that the Conservatives despaired of ever beating Macdonald. He died suddenly in office in 1954.

Macdonald's more than 15 years as premier brought fundamental changes. Under his leadership, the Nova Scotia government spent more than $100 million paving roads, building bridges, extending electrical systems and improving public education. Macdonald dealt with the mass unemployment of the Great Depression by putting the jobless to work on highway projects. He felt direct government relief payments would weaken moral character and lower morale. But he also faced the grim reality that the financially-strapped Nova Scotia government could not afford to participate in federal relief programs that required matching contributions from the provinces. His governments sought to attract tourists partly by sponsoring advertising campaigns that created the lasting image of an unspoiled province where visitors could leave the hectic modern world and "step back in time."

Macdonald articulated a philosophy of provincial autonomy, arguing that poorer provinces such as Nova Scotia needed a greater share of national tax revenues to pay for health, education and welfare. He consistently argued that Nova Scotians were victims of a national policy that protected the manufacturing industries of Ontario and Quebec with steep tariffs forcing people to pay higher prices for everything from automobiles and radios to washing machines and farm equipment. It was no accident, Macdonald maintained, that Nova Scotia had gone from being the richest province before Canadian Confederation in 1867 to being the poorest one by the 1930s.

Macdonald was a classical liberal in the 19th century tradition of John Stuart Mill. He believed in individual freedom and responsibility. For him, the role of the state was to provide basic services and he rejected calls for interventionist policies such as the public ownership of key industries.

Early life and education

Angus Lewis Macdonald was born August 10, 1890 on a small family farm at Dunvegan, Inverness County, Cape Breton. He was the ninth child in a family of 14. His mother was from a prominent Acadian family on Prince Edward Island while his father's family had emigrated to Cape Breton from the Scottish Highlands in 1810. The Macdonalds were devout Roman Catholics as well as ardent Liberal Party supporters.

In 1905, when Macdonald was 15, the family moved to the town of Port Hood, Cape Breton. There, Macdonald attended the Port Hood Academy. He then planned to enroll in the Bachelor of Arts program at St Francis Xavier University (St. FX) in Antigonish but needed to earn enough money first to pay his tuition fees and living expenses. At the time, it was common for university students to teach school to finance their education. Macdonald obtained a teaching licence and taught for two years. He arrived at St. FX in 1909 with enough money to finance one-and-a-half years of study. That required him to interrupt his studies in the academic year 1911-12 to earn enough money to continue. Even then, he completed his final term on credit and had to teach in the university's high school during 1914-15 to pay off his debt. Macdonald did well at St. FX. Among other things, he played rugby, joined the debating team, edited the student newspaper and, in his graduating year, won the gold medal in seven of his eight courses. He was also class valedictorian.

War service

File:Angus l macdonald book.jpg

Biography of Angus L. Macdonald published in 1969.
_{Cover reproduction by permission of Lancelot Press and author John Hawkins.}

The First World War broke out while Macdonald was earning his university degree. In 1915, therefore, he underwent military training in the Canadian Officers Training Corps. In February 1916, after completing his teaching duties, he joined the 185th battalion, known as the Cape Breton Highlanders leaving for Britain in October 1916 for more training. Macdonald was finally sent to the front lines in France in May 1918 as a lieutenant in Nova Scotia's 25th battalion. He participated in heavy fighting and in August 1918 at Arras, went from being a platoon commander to leading his entire company because all of the other officers had been wounded or killed. Macdonald felt fortunate to have been spared, but his luck ran out in Belgium when he was hit in the neck by a German sniper's bullet on November 7, 1918, just four days before the Armistice. Macdonald spent eight months in Britain recovering from his wound. He returned home to his family in Cape Breton in 1919. Biographer Stephen Henderson writes that the war had made him "more serious and less self-confident," but "struck by the willingness of so many to march to horrible deaths in the name of an abstract principle." His own brother Colin had been killed in action on August 26, 1918.

Law studies

In September, 1919 the 29-year-old Angus L. Macdonald began two years of legal studies at Dalhousie Law School in Halifax. He had decided to take the three year law course in two. During his years at the law school, Macdonald formed lifelong friendships with students who were to become members of the political elite in the region. Once again, he excelled in athletics, was elected to the Dalhousie students' council, became the associate editor of the student newspaper and led the opposition in the law school's Mock Parliament. He scored firsts in nearly every course and graduated in 1921 with academic distinction, but was edged out for the gold medal by a student who later became a judge of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

In 1925-26, while teaching at the Dalhousie Law School, Macdonald took additional courses in law at Columbia University in New York, mainly by correspondence. He used these "special studies" as a basis for full-time graduate work at the Harvard Law School in Boston, Massachusetts in 1928. Harvard's faculty members saw the law as an instrument for social improvement. In 1929, Macdonald successfully completed his doctoral thesis on the responsibility of property holders under civil law.

Career before politics

Civil servant

Angus L. Macdonald was hired by the Nova Scotia government as assistant deputy attorney-general immediately after he graduated from the Dalhousie Law School. He worked mainly as an administrator, although he occasionally appeared in court to help the attorney general when he personally prosecuted a case. Macdonald assisted in the 1923 prosecution of J.B. McLachlan, the fiery leader of the Cape Breton coal miners' union. The case stemmed from a steelworker's strike in Sydney, Cape Breton that provincial police tried to suppress with force. McLachlan called his coal miners out in sympathy proclaiming: "No miner can remain at work while this government turns Sydney into a jungle." McLachlan was charged with seditious libel and later, sentenced to two years in jail.

Macdonald fell in love with Agnes Foley, the attorney general's secretary and a member of a prominent Irish Catholic family. They married on June 17, 1924.

Editor of the Gazette

While working in the Attorney-General's office, Macdonald became the first editor of the Gazette, the official Catholic newspaper for the Archdiocese of Halifax. His work at the paper led him to become embroiled in a dispute involving his alma mater, St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish. Father Jimmy Tompkins, a hard-driving administrator and popular professor at St. FX wrote to Macdonald urging him to use the Gazette to campaign for the federation of universities in Canada's Maritime Provinces. The U.S. Carnegie Corporation was offering $500,000 to each of five smaller colleges if they would agree to allow their students to complete their undergraduate education at a central university in Halifax.

It was a controversial idea, especially at St. FX where the university president and the local bishop strongly opposed federation. They feared their small Catholic university would be swallowed by a big, secular institution in Halifax. Father Tompkins argued however, that the Carnegie money would raise academic standards at Nova Scotia's universities which then received no financial support from the provincial government. He also believed that federation would allow the smaller colleges to concentrate on what he called "People's Schools." Tompkins himself had established such a school at St. FX in 1921 to teach adults in depressed communities the skills they would need to pull themselves out of poverty.

The Forrest Building housed the Dalhousie Law School where Macdonald taught in the 1920s.
_{Courtesy of the Dalhousie University Photograph Collection, PC1, Dalhousie University Archives and Special Collections, Halifax, NS.}

In letters to Macdonald, Tompkins wrote that the campaign would produce political allies who "will vote for you when you run for premier." Macdonald, who knew Tompkins from his student days at St. FX., launched vigorously into the controversy with carefully-researched and reasoned articles in the Gazette and a series of 10 in Cape Breton's Sydney Post. In the end though, the often-bitter campaign ended in defeat. St. FX and all but one of the small religious colleges refused to join a federation. The bishop in Antigonish sent Father Tompkins into a 12-year exile as a parish priest in the remote fishing village of Canso, Nova Scotia. And Angus L. Macdonald was no nearer to being premier, although he had won both warm praise and harsh criticism for his efforts.

Law professor

In 1922, Macdonald began work as a part-time lecturer at the Dalhousie Law School. When he left the attorney-general's office in 1924, he became a full-time teacher at the school. Macdonald was a popular professor with a heavy teaching load. In fact, many considered him the best professor in the law school. One former student describes him sitting at his desk on the rostrum speaking slowly and deliberately while gazing intently at the ceiling. "The more students disagreed (with one another in class) the more Angus encouraged it." When the deanship of the law school came open in 1929, Macdonald agonized over whether he should take the job. He apparently had strong support from prominent people including several members of the university's board of governors. At the same time however, he was increasingly drawn to politics and accepting the deanship would mean postponing his political ambitions indefinitely. In the end, the job was offered to another prominent Canadian academic who accepted on condition that Macdonald remain at the school. Macdonald did stay, but only for one more year. In 1930, he resigned so that he would be free to enter politics.

Political career

Federal campaign, 1930

The federal election in the summer of 1930 gave the 40-year-old Macdonald a chance to run for office. He decided to contest the riding of Inverness in his native Cape Breton. There he faced a Conservative opponent whose style contrasted sharply with his own cool and reserved manner. According to biographer John Hawkins, I.D. "Ike" MacDougall "was a gifted performer who before an audience could cut an opponent's well-marshalled arguments until they fell amid roars of laughter. He was the master of hyperbole, pun and high spirits. He could win a rural audience, not by his logic, but by his performance on the platform." Macdonald campaigned hard, but the trend was against him. The Conservatives led by R.B. Bennett defeated Mackenzie King's unpopular Liberals. And in Inverness, Ike MacDougall was re-elected by the narrow margin of 165 votes. It was to be Angus L. Macdonald's only election defeat. Afterwards, Macdonald retreated to Halifax where he opened his own private law office in August 1930.

Provincial leadership, 1930

Angus L. Macdonald was active in Liberal Party organizational work during the latter part of the 1920s. In 1925, the party had suffered a crushing defeat after 43 years in power. Its longtime leader and premier George Murray had retired in 1923 and the new premier Ernest Armstrong was unable to maintain Liberal support at a time when Nova Scotians suffered from the devastating effects of post-war economic depression. The Liberals, increasingly out of touch with ordinary people, now appeared to be a party of wealthy business interests. In the provincial election of 1925, they were reduced to three seats in the legislature.. Many believed that the time had come to return the party to its reformist roots. It was in this context that Macdonald worked with other reform-minded members to establish a network of younger Liberals intent on reviving their party.

In the 1928 provincial election, the Liberals regained some of their lost popularity in one of the closest votes in Nova Scotia history. The Conservatives remained in power with 23 seats to the Liberals' 20. Economic conditions worsened after the stock market crash of 1929 making it seem increasingly possible that the Liberals would return to power in the next election. Macdonald helped draft a 15-point party platform for approval at a Liberal convention in October, 1930. The platform promised an eight-hour working day and free elementary school textbooks. It also pledged to establish a formal inquiry into Nova Scotia's economy and the province's place within Confederation.

The convention, held on October 1, 1930, proved to be a turning point both for the party and for Angus L. Macdonald. For the first time, delegates would choose the party's new leader instead of leaving it up to members of the Liberal caucus at the legislature. Two veterans of Liberal politics, both wealthy businessmen, were contesting the leadership. But there was little enthusiasm for either. Just as nominations were about to close, a delegate from Truro rose unexpectedly to nominate Macdonald. A surprised Angus L. at first declined the nomination, then agreed to accept it when he sensed strong support for him on the convention floor. A few hours later he had won an overwhelming first-ballot victory to become the new Liberal leader. Within three years, he would lead his party to victory becoming Premier of Nova Scotia.

Provincial election, 1933

The Angus L. Macdonald bridge spanning Halifax Harbour. As Premier of Nova Scotia, Macdonald turned the first sod to officially begin construction on March 1, 1952. The bridge opened on April 2, 1955, almost a year after his death.

Before the provincial election of 1933, the governing Conservatives had reduced the number of seats in the legislature and had given the government greater control over the voter's list resulting in the disenfranchisement of many Liberal voters. The Liberals took the matter to court allowing some of the disenfranchised voters to put themselves back on the list. The ensuing political scandal, compounded by suffering in the province due to the Great Depression, resulted in a resounding victory for Macdonald's Liberals.

First terms as premier, 1933-40

In order to fight the Great Depression the Liberal government brought in unemployment relief and old age pensions. His government also passed a labour law giving workers the rights to form trade unions and engage in collective bargaining. The Macdonald government also engaged in a large scale highway building initiative to create jobs. The Liberals were re-elected in 1937.

Federal cabinet, 1940-45

File:Angus and princessfull.jpg

Princess Elizabeth and Angus L. Macdonald with girl guides and boy scouts at the Nova Scotia Legislature, 1951.
_{Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Nova Scotia}

With Canada's involvement in World War II, Macdonald was asked to join the Canadian cabinet of William Lyon Mackenzie King as minister of defence for naval services. Macdonald won a seat representing Kingston, Ontario in the Canadian House of Commons by acclamation. Macdonald was responsible for the wartime expansion of the Royal Canadian Navy. He differed with King in the Conscription Crisis of 1944 favouring an unequivocal implementation of the draft and resigned from the federal cabinet in April 1945.

Provincial premier, 1945-54

Macdonald returned to Nova Scotia where he again became leader of the Liberal Party and premier leading the party to its greatest election victory by shutting out the Tories. His opposition consisted of two members from the CCF elected in Cape Breton.

Macdonald's second government created the province's first department of education, built a bridge to link Halifax and Dartmouth as well as a causeway between Cape Breton Island and the mainland.

The Tories made gains in the 1953 election but the Liberals were re-elected. Macdonald's health was declining, however, and he died in office on April 13, 1954 after suffering a heart attack. The Angus L. Macdonald Bridge in Halifax is named in his honour as is the Angus L. Macdonald Library at St. Francis Xavier University.

References

• Beck, J. Murray. (1988) Politics of Nova Scotia. (Volume Two 1896-1988) Tantallon, N.S.: Four East Publications.
• Chapman, Harry. (2005) Crossings: Fifty Years of the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge. Halifax: Nimbus Publishing.
• Forbes, E.R. (1989) Challenging the Regional Stereotype: Essays on the 20th Century Maritimes. Fredericton: Acadiensis Press.
• Forbes, E.R. and Muise, D.A. (editors). (1993 & 1997) The Atlantic Provinces in Confederation. Toronto & Fredericton: University of Toronto Press and Acadiensis Press.
• Hawkins, John. (1969) The Life and Times of Angus L. Windsor, N.S.: Lancelot Press Limited.
• Henderson, T. Stephen. (2007) Angus L. Macdonald: A Provincial Liberal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated.
• Lotz, Jim and Welton, Michael R. (1997) Father Jimmy: The Life and Times of Jimmy Tompkins. Wreck Cove, Cape Breton: Breton Books.
• Macdonald, Angus L. (1960) Speeches of Angus L. Macdonald. Toronto: Longmans, Green and Company.
• March, William. (1986) Red Line: The Chronicle-Herald and the Mail-Star 1875-1954. Halifax: Chebucto Agencies Limited.
• Stevens, Geoffrey. (1973) Stanfield. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited.
• Waite, P.B. (1994) The Lives of Dalhousie University: Volume One, 1818-1925. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.
• Waite, P.B. (1998) The Lives of Dalhousie University: Volume Two, 1925-1980. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.
• Whitaker, Reginald. (1977) The Government Party: Organizing and Financing the Liberal Party of Canada 1930-58. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Willis, John. (1979) A History of Dalhousie Law School. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

External links

• Political biography from the Library of Parliament