James Garfield Gardiner
James Garfield "Jimmy" Gardiner, PC (
November 30,
1883-
January 2,
1962) was a
Canadian farmer, educator, and politician. He served as
Premier of
Saskatchewan, and as a minister in the
Canadian Cabinet.
Jimmy Gardiner was first elected to the
Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan in 1914, and served as Minister of Highways (1922-26) in the government of Premier
Charles A. Dunning from 1922 until succeeding Dunning as Premier in 1926. A highly partisan Liberal, his government lost its majority in the legislature in the
1929 election due to patronage scandals. Although the
Conservative Party had won fewer seats, it was able to form a "co-operative government" with the support of some
Progressive Party and independent Members of the Legislative Assmbly.
As
Leader of the opposition, Gardiner accused
James Anderson's Conservative government of bigotry, alleging that it was linked with the
Ku Klux Klan. Gardiner defeated Anderson in the
1934 election, and became Premier a second time.
Gardiner left provincial politics the next year in order to join the federal cabinet of
Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King as
Minister of Agriculture. He was elected to the
House of Commons a few months later. Gardiner held the agriculture portfolio for twenty-two years until the
1957 federal election when the Liberal government was defeated. He was a powerful figure in both the King and St. Laurent governments.
In
1947, he was sworn into the
Imperial Privy Council, allowing him use of the prenominal honorific
The Right Honourable.
Gardiner ran for the leadership of the
Liberal Party of Canada at the 1948
Liberal leadership convention, but lost to
Louis St. Laurent. He remained in the
Canadian House of Commons until he lost his seat in the
1958 Diefenbaker sweep.
Saskatchewan's
Gardiner Dam is named after him.
In 2006, the
CBC agreed to pull the movie
Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story from all broadcasts in response to criticism about its portrayals of Gardiner. [
1] This controversy is ongoing, and the show may be altered to exclude Gardiner or come with a
disclaimer.
*
Federal Political Biography from the Library of Parliament
