Robertson, Gideon Decker, 1874-1933 : Gideon Decker Robertson (26 August 1874, Welland County - 25 August 1933, Ottawa) was born in Welland County, Ontario, the son of Gavin E. Robertson and Loretta Goring Robertson. In 1893, he started a career as a telegrapher for the Canadian Pacific Railway. He was later elected general chairman of the Order of Telegraphers in 1908, before being appointed deputy president of the same organization, in January 1914, and then vice-president a year later. In the following years, Robertson served as a mediator in many important labour disputes.
On 20 January 1917, Robert Borden appointed Robertson to the Senate of Canada. At the end of the same year, he was made Minister without a Portfolio, before becoming the first labour man to be appointed Minister of Labour on 7 November 1918. He served as the Minister of Labour under Prime Ministers Robert Borden and Arthur Meighen from 1918 to 1921, and then again under Prime Minister R.B. Bennett from 1930 to 1932.
Robertson's terms as Minister of Labour coincided with two key moments in Canadian labour history. During the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, Robertson and Arthur Meighen (who was then serving as the Minister of the Interior and as acting Minister of Justice) met with the "Citizens' Committee of 1000," composed of local professionals and businessmen who opposed the strike, but refused to hold a similar meeting with the Central Strike Committee. Shortly afterwards, Robertson ordered the arrest of 10 strike leaders and two union representatives, and he later supported the government's decision to send in the Royal Northwest Mounted Police on June 21, 1919, a move that precipitated the most violent confrontation of the strike.
Upon resuming his position as Minister of Labour following the election of R.B. Bennett's government in 1930, Robertson helped formulate the Government of Canada's initial response to the economic crisis that came to be known as the Great Depression. Following the passage of the Unemployment Relief Act in the fall of 1930, Robertson travelled across Western Canada in the summer of 1931. The scenes Robertson witnessed on this tour made a deep impression on him, and elsewhere he writes movingly of the "desolation that beggars description" which he encountered in drought-stricken Southern Saskatchewan.
Robertson spent the last two years of his life in poor health. At the end of 1931, he suffered from a first stroke which led him to hand in his resignation as Minister of Labour in February of 1932. He then went on to represent Canada at the International Labour Conference in Geneva where he was elected president of the conference before suffering from another stroke in May, 1932. Robertson died on 25 August 1933, two weeks after he suffered a paralytic stroke from which he never recovered.
Robertson had married Mary Berry Hay (31 July 1874, Watford - 24 July 1932) in 1896 and from that union were born four sons and two daughters. The second eldest son, Gavin Elliott, a flight lieutenant of the 85th squadron, had died in September 1917 on the battlefields of France.
