PA-025535 | John Wesley Dafoe
John Wesley Dafoe
April 1884, 19th century
PA-025535
This artefact belongs to : © National Archives of Canada
Description
Keywords:
Keys to History
During the Depression, no newspaper editor in Canada had more influence than John Wesley Dafoe (1866-1944), since 1901 the editor of the Manitoba (later Winnipeg) Free Press. In his teens he had turned from the Conservatives and joined the Liberal party, having come to believe that the latter's low tariff policy benefited Canada.
Dafoe therefore greeted with skepticism the decision by the Conservative government of R. B. Bennett (1870-1947) to raise tariffs as a means to economic recovery. Protection for manufactured goods meant higher prices for Canadians, Dafoe believed, while imposing tariffs on goods that Canada needed to export made no sense.
Dafoe was no knee-jerk Liberal. He criticized Canada's timid foreign policy in the later 1930s. But his reputation as the voice of Prairie Liberalism earned him an appointment in 1937 on the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations.
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What
Under Sir Wilfrid Laurier (1841-1919) and W. L. M. King (1874-1950), who between them led the Liberal party from 1887 to 1948, the Liberals generally favoured low taxes and tariffs.
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Where
Dafoe is still the most famous son of Combermere, Ontario, a small community in Madawaska Township, Renfrew County, about an hour's drive northwest of Ottawa.
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When
In 1901, when Dafoe became editor of the Free Press, Winnipeg was the largest and most important city in the Canadian West. By 1944, Vancouver was taking its place.
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Who
Dafoe was still a young reporter with the Montreal Herald when this photograph was taken in 1884.
Exhibition Label
References
- Michiel Horn, The League for Social Reconstruction: Intellectual Origins of the Democratic Left in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), pp. 43-6.
- J.M. Beck, Pendulum of Power: Canada's Federal Elections (Scarborough, Ont.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 220-1.
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