Sir Oliver Mowat became Premier of Ontario on this date in 1872 and would go on to hold his province’s highest office for the next 24 years. During the Mowat-era at Queen’s Park, this Father of Confederation won six consecutive majority mandates, a remarkable mandate. In modern times, the only Liberal who has come close at earning such an electoral record is Dalton McGuinty who won three elections in a row.
In 2016, McGuinty, who is a great supporter of my work in the field of political history, penned a tribute essay to Mowat for my book Canada Always: The Defining Speeches of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and you will find it below.
By Dalton McGuinty
Wilfrid Laurier is remembered as an eloquent speaker, but his flair with words was used in the service of the one achievement in politics that makes all progress possible: he won elections. He is the only Prime Minister (along with Sir John A. Macdonald himself) to win four elections in a row, to have had the longest unbroken tenure as Prime Minister and to have been the longest serving MP in history, at 45 years. His success at the ballot box, supported by his gifts as a speaker, was the means by which he acted on unshakeable ideals.
So, it is not surprising that, in addition to a shared party affiliation, he saw a kindred spirit in Oliver Mowat. As Laurier points out, Sir Oliver Mowat, in 40 years of public life, “contributed to revolutionize, peaceably but thoroughly, the relation which had previously existed between the colonies and the parent state, and to shape our destinies and institutions to the form and condition which we now enjoy.”
I served as Premier of Ontario with the benefit of strong institutions and a relatively clear delineation of federal and provincial powers. It is hard to imagine the career trajectory of a politician, such as Mowat, who began public life under an old regime of colonial rule and oligarchs, and who left public life having built the foundations of a new nation that would grow to protect the rights and interests of all.
As Premier, Oliver Mowat fought to establish provincial rights, not merely for the exercise of power, but to ensure that Ontario’s strengths could be maximized for the benefit of a stronger Canada. One of those strengths was a flourishing Francophone community, which, with their rights protected, contributed to our culture and economy in all the years since, and continue to do so today. That lesson — that respecting our differences makes us all better off — continues to guide our province.
In reading the words of Laurier in honouring Mowat, we are reminded that Canada, and Ontario, were built on compromise. What the politicians of Laurier and Mowat’s era taught us is that there is strength in compromise. Compromise builds nations and provinces that last. In Canada, we have successfully reconciled the interests of two founding nations, separated church and state, protected the rights of minorities and built a federation with the flexibility to meet new challenges, by compromise.
Many peoples of the world are bound by a founding myth. In Canada, our national character was an active choice. Leaders like Laurier and Mowat were among those who chose to build a tolerant, diverse nation. It is up to every generation of Ontarians and Canadians to not only honour this legacy but to actively choose to build on it.
Arthur Milnes is an accomplished public historian and award-winning journalist. He was research assistant on The Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney’s best-selling Memoirs and also served as a speechwriter to then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper and as a Fellow of the Queen’s Centre for the Study of Democracy under the leadership of Tom Axworthy. A resident of Kingston, Ontario, Milnes serves as the in-house historian at the 175 year-old Frontenac Club Hotel.