Mackenzie Bowell

Biography

Sir Mackenzie Bowell was Canada's fifth prime minister, serving from December 1894 to April 1896. He was born on 27 December 1823 in Rickinghall, Suffolk, England, and came to Upper Canada with his family as a child in the early 1830s, settling in Belleville. He was apprenticed as a printer at the Belleville Intelligencer and eventually became its owner and editor.

Bowell was active in the Orange Order, the Protestant fraternal organization, and served as its grand master for British North America in the 1870s. He also served in the militia, including during the Fenian raids of the 1860s. He was elected to the first House of Commons in 1867 for North Hastings, Ontario, as a Conservative, and held the seat for 25 years. From 1878 to 1891 he was minister of customs, responsible for administering the protective tariff of the National Policy. He later served as minister of militia and defence and, after his appointment to the Senate in 1892, became the first minister of trade and commerce and government leader in the Senate.

When Prime Minister Sir John Thompson died suddenly in December 1894, the governor general, Lord Aberdeen, asked Bowell, the senior cabinet minister, to form a government. He led it from the Senate, the second prime minister to do so after John Abbott. He was knighted in 1895. His government was soon consumed by the Manitoba Schools Question. In 1890 Manitoba had ended public funding for Catholic schools, and in 1895 the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that the federal government had the power to intervene. Bowell's cabinet issued an order directing Manitoba to restore the schools, which the province refused.

Bowell's handling of the issue, and of his cabinet, drew criticism from both sides. Several ministers believed he lacked the authority to lead, and in January 1896 seven of them resigned, demanding his replacement. Bowell called them a nest of traitors. Most returned after a compromise under which Sir Charles Tupper joined the cabinet and took charge in the Commons, where the government introduced a remedial bill. The bill was blocked before Parliament's term ran out, and Bowell resigned on 27 April 1896, with Tupper taking office on 1 May.

Bowell remained in the Senate and led the Conservatives there until 1906. He continued to oversee his newspaper in Belleville. He died in Belleville on 10 December 1917, aged 93, and is buried in Belleville Cemetery.