Bennett, R. B. (Richard Bedford), 1870-1947 : Prime Minister of Canada (1930-35)
Richard Bedford Bennett was born at Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick on 3 July 1870, and grew up on a farm. He worked as a teacher and in a law office before graduating from Dalhousie University law school.
Bennett then joined a Chatham, New Brunswick law firm that employed Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) as an office boy. At Aitken's prompting, Bennett ran successfully for the town council in 1895, but moved to Calgary two years later, where he became extremely wealthy through legal work and investments. He was president of the Canadian Bar Association (1929-30).
In 1898, Bennett was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the North-West Territories for the riding of West Calgary, and re-elected in 1902. He led the Conservative party of Alberta from 1905 and was elected to the provincial legislature in 1909. Two years later, Bennett was elected to the House of Commons for the riding of Calgary. Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden appointed him director general of the National Service Board in 1916. The following year, he supported the Military Service Act, while opposing Borden's union government, and did not stand for re-election.
Prime Minister Arthur Meighen named Bennett minister of justice just before the 1921 federal election in which he was defeated in Calgary West. Bennett won the riding in 1925 and served as minister of finance, as well as acting minister of mines, the interior and superintendent of Indian affairs. Meighen was defeated in the following year's federal election, and Bennett became party leader in 1927.
Bennett was elected prime minister in July 1930, serving also as minister of finance and external affairs. The new government attempted to overcome the Great Depression through tariffs, and hosted the 1932 Imperial Economic Conference in hopes of stimulating trade within the empire. Legislation provided unemployment and farm relief, and financed public works projects, while the government extended its ability to regulate the economy by creating the Bank of Canada in 1934 and the
Canadian Wheat Board a year later.
Under Bennett, Canada gained autonomy in external relations with the 1931 Statute of Westminster, while the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (now the CBC) was established in 1932.
In January 1935, Bennett announced a 'Canadian New Deal' of unprecedented social welfare initiatives to combat the ongoing depression. At the same time, he invoked section 98 of the Criminal Code, to arbitrarily arrest, detain and try members of the Communist Party, and ordered police to violently suppress that summer's On-to-Ottawa trek of unemployed men.
Bennett was defeated in the October 1935 general election, but remained Conservative leader until 1938, when he retired to England. During the Second World War, he advised Lord Beaverbrook, who was now Britain's minister of aircraft production. In return, he was ennobled as Viscount Bennett in 1941.
Bennett never married. He died in England on 26 June 1947 and was buried in St Michael's Churchyard, Mickleham.
Bennett endorsed the federal government's systematically racist relationship with Indigenous Peoples, which caused tremendous ongoing trauma, displacement, disenfranchisement and exclusion. Specifically, in 1934 he appointed a lawyer with a history of racist beliefs to lead the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Alleged Flogging of Indian Pupils, which investigated claims that students had been beaten at the Shubenacadie Residential School. Bennett accepted the inquiry's report, which praised the principal's actions.
The Government of Canada has officially apologised for actions taken under Bennett's authority. The Prime Minister at the time apologised for Indian Residential Schools in 2008 and 2017.
