MACKENZIE BOWELL fr om paper to politics
BY: BILL KENNEDY
Mackenzie Bowell emigrated to Canada from England with his family in 1832 when he was nine years old. Belleville became the family’s home and at the age of eleven he was hired on as an apprentice by George Benjamin, the owner of the town’s newspaper, The Intelligencer. It was the beginning of a long and accomplished career that eventually would lead him into politics and the role of Canada’s fifth Prime Minister. By 1848 the twenty-five year old Bowell had earned his teaching diploma and advanced from apprentice to the newspaper’s publisher. He took an active role in his community. He became a school trustee where for several years he was chairman of the board. He called on parents to help their schools by supporting the teachers and supplying the children with books, paper and writing slates. He and his wife Harriet Moore, who he married in 1847, would have nine children of their own, four sons and five daughters. In 1858 Bowell joined the Belleville Rifle Company where he served with the militia guarding the border of what was then Upper Canada during the American Civil War. A decade later he was a major with the 49th Hastings Battalion and Grandmaster of the Orange Order of British North America. In 1860 he had been one of the leading Orangemen to lobby the Prince of Wales to reconsider bypassing his planned stopover in Belleville. It seems there had been a breach of protocol when local rowdy Orangemen marched in town with banners flying and other Orange paraphernalia contrary to Her Majesty’s wishes not to do anything that might offend any group of her subjects. The prince, who had fully intended to disembark from his ship in the Bay of Quinte, sailed off without setting foot on Belleville’s shore. Bowell and other leading Orangemen followed him to Toronto with entreaties to return but to no avail. In 1863 Bowell ran as a Conservative in Hastings County North. The Liberals had mounted a campaign against Roman Catholic rights and as it was a position he refused to take it cost him the election. Four years later he ran again and this time won, holding his seat in the House of Commons through 1874 despite the Pacific Scandal at that time, which cost the Conservatives the government. From 1878 to 1892 he served as Minister of Customs, followed by appointments as Minister of Militia and Defence and Minister of Trade and Commerce. In 1894 he was President of the Privy Council. Bowell’s elevation to the nation’s top job came in December 1894 when, on the sudden death of Prime Minister Sir
John Thompson, he was appointed to the position by the Governor General. Unfortunately for Bowell this happened at a time when Canada and its government were implacably divided over the Manitoba Schools Question concerning Catholic education rights. His efforts to resolve the issue failed and events came to a head for him when he lost the confidence of his cabinet, several members of whom had conspired against him and resigned. In April 1896 he submitted his resignation and was replaced by Charles Tupper. Bowell would stay on with government where he served as Senate Leader of the Opposition after the Conservative loss in 1896. He would continue to serve his country in the Senate for another decade. He died in 1917 at the age of 94. In his book Belleville, A Popular History Gerry Boyce says this of Mackenzie Bowell: “Had Bowell taken office in the prime of his life, rather than in his early seventies, he might have become one of Canada’s outstanding political leaders. Honest and conciliatory, he was a man of steadfast character, courage and integrity. He recognized his own short comings as a national leader and did his utmost to put honour and the country’s welfare above his personal, religious and racial sympathies.”
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