Drew was born in Guelph,Ontario,the son of Annie Isabelle Stevenson (Gibbs) and John Jacob Drew.[1] He was educated at Upper Canada College and graduated from the University of Toronto,where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Alpha Phi chapter). He then studied law at Osgoode Hall Law School. He served with distinction in World War I as an officer in the Canadian Field Artillery. After the war,he became lieutenant-colonel of the 11th Field Brigade and later honorary colonel of the 11th Field Regiment,Royal Canadian Artillery. He was the author of a book about Canadian aviators in World War I,"Canada's Fighting Airmen."[2]
He was called to the bar in 1920. He married Fiorenza Johnson (1910–1965),daughter of Edward Johnson,who was a noted opera singer (tenor) and later general manager (1935–1950) of the Metropolitan Opera House,in New York City.[3] Drew remarried in 1966 to Phyllis McCullagh,the widow of George McCullagh,the former publisher of Toronto's The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Telegram newspapers.[4]
Drew won by responding to the mood of the times,and running on a relatively left-wing platform,promising such radical reforms as free dental care and Medicare. His government did not implement much of its promised platform (including Medicare or denticare),but it established the basis for the Tory regimes that followed by trying to steer a moderate course.
Education
His government introduced the Drew Regulation in 1944,which made it compulsory for Ontario schools to provide one hour of religious instruction a week.[6] By religious instruction,Drew meant the "instruction in the tenets of the Christian faith",a measure that was considered to be anti-Semitic by Ontario's Jewish community.[6] Rabbi Abraham Feinberg led the opposition to the Drew regulation and said that it was "undemocratic,imperiling the separation of Church and State,and leading to disunity in society."[6]
Relationship with federal government
Drew was strident in his criticism of the federal government of Mackenzie King,attacked its leadership in the Canadian war effort,chastised it during the Conscription Crisis of 1944 for not instituting full conscription,and accused it of attempting to centralize power.[citation needed]
1945 election
Drew (at the centre) at the Dominion-Provincial Conference on Reconstruction
During the spring 1945 Ontario election,Drew ran a red-baiting campaign against the CCF's Ontario section.[7] The previous two years of anti-socialist attacks by the Conservatives and their supporters,like Gladstone Murray and Montague A. Sanderson,were devastatingly effective against the previously-popular CCF.[8] Much of the source material for the anti-CCF campaign came from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)'s Special Investigation Branch's agent D-208:Captain William J. Osbourne-Dempster.[9] His office was supposed to be investigating wartime fifth column saboteurs.[10] Instead,starting in November 1943,he was investigating,almost exclusively,Ontario opposition MPPs and mainly focused on the CCF caucus.[11] The fact that Jolliffe knew about these 'secret' investigations as early as February 1944 led to one of the most infamous incidents in 20th-century Canadian politics.[12]
The accusation led to Drew ordering the LeBel Royal Commission to investigate the charges made by Jolliffe.[13] The charges stemmed from Ontario's Official Opposition Leader Jolliffe,during the election campaign. He made the allegations during a campaign radio speech on 24 May 1945.[13] Drew announced in a radio speech on 26 May that he would call an inquiry,and he appointed Mr. Justice A. M. LeBel to lead the commission on 28 May.[13] Jolliffe and the Liberal leader,Mitchell Hepburn,made offers to withhold from electioneering and have the commission report before the election.[13] Drew refused to postpone the election or to speed up the commission process.[13] The commission began hearings on 20 June 1945,[14] and heard final arguments on 20 July 1945.[15] The report was issued on 11 October 1945,[16] with LeBel agreeing with much of what Jolliffe charged but ultimately ruling that the Premier did not have a secret political police reporting to him,mainly due to the lack of direct documented evidence.[17] In the late 1970s,that documented evidence was found,but the provincial government at the time considered the case closed.[18]
The Conservatives got their majority,as they crushed the CCF on 4 June 1945.[19] Drew's party won 66 out the 90 seats in the legislature and reduced Jolliffe's CCF to just 8 seats,which also meant that it was no longer the Official Opposition.[19] Drew won 20 seats from the CCF directly,including Jolliffe's.[19] The "Gestapo" claims against Drew seemed to do little,if any damage,and the CCF got nearly the same percentage in the popular vote as had been predicted by a Gallup poll one month earlier.[20]
Second term
Hydro
Drew's government insisted on spending $400 million in a ten-year program to convert Ontario's electricity system from 25 cycles per second (hertz) to 60,which would standardize it with the rest of North America.[21] The standardization allowed the province to join the North American power grid to easily import and export electricity,a prerequisite for the province's industrial development.[21]
Immigration
Drew also helped spur postwar immigration to Ontario from 1947 to 1948 by setting up immigration offices throughout the United Kingdom and initiating cheap charter flights to bring an estimated 20,000 British immigrants to the province in what has been called the world's first mass migration by air.[22] Drew,a committed British imperialist,focussed on attracting British immigrants because he felt they were "the right class of people" to bring to Canada.[4]
Spending
Drew's government also increased funding for roads and highways and also increased funding for schools by increasing the provincial government's share for education spending from 15% to 50%.[22] Through a government that made investments to modernize Ontario,Drew laid the basis for the province's postwar industrial expansion and for a Progressive Conservative dynasty that lasted 42 years and saw six successive Progressive Conservative premiers.[21]
1948 election
While the Tories won a majority in the legislature in the 1948 election,Drew himself was defeated in his High Park electoral district,in west-end Toronto,by the CCFer and temperance crusader William "Temperance Willie" Temple,who had targeted Drew over his softening of Ontario's liquour laws by legalizing cocktail bars in Ontario.[22][23] Drew blamed a supposed future communist takeover of Ontario on the failure of Ontarians to re-elect him.[24]
Progressive Conservative PartyMember of Parliament (MP) George Russell Boucher resigned his Carleton seat so that Drew could then contest it in a by-election in order to enter the House of Commons.[25] The federal Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) was determined to defeat him,so they ran Eugene Forsey as their candidate.[26] Bill Temple was brought up from Toronto to appear at a political meeting in Richmond,Ontario's Town Hall,where Forsey and Drew were speaking.[27] He accused the Tory leader of being "a tool of the liquor interests" and also made suggestions about Drew's sobriety.[27] Throughout the evening Drew grew more red-faced and explosive every time Temple spoke.[26] Finally,after Drew misheard Temple calling him dishonest,the two men were restrained before they could come to physical blows with each other.[26] A riot was barely averted,and the meeting had to be terminated.[27] On December 20,1948,Drew soundly defeated Forsey by over 8,000 votes —forcing the CCF candidate to lose his deposit —and went on to sit in Parliament.[28] As leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party and now an MP,he became Leader of the Opposition.[29]
In the 1949 and 1953 federal elections,Drew's Tories were defeated handily by the Liberals,led by Louis St. Laurent. As a federal politician,Drew alienated potential supporters in Quebec when it was remembered that he had called French-Canadians a "defeated race". This rhetoric may not have been as damaging among some AnglophoneOntario voters when he had been a provincial politician,but it was now used against him by his federal opponents. His support for conscription during World War II also hurt his prospects among French-Canadian voters. He ran against Forsey again in the Carleton district,and defeated him by an even wider margin on June 27,1949.[30]
Drew led the PCs into one more general election,in 1953,with slightly better results than the previous election. In poor health following a nearly fatal attack of meningitis Drew resigned as Progressive Conservative leader in 1956 and was succeeded by John Diefenbaker. On 12 December 1956 he received the Key to the City of Ottawa.[31]
Drew served as the first Chancellor of the University of Guelph from 1965 to 1971. In 1967,"for his services in government," he entered the newly-created Order of Canada as a Companion.[32] In November 1972,he had a heart attack and was admitted to Wellesley Hospital on November 19.[33] His condition worsened due to congestive heart failure,and he slipped into and out of consciousness in late December and early January.[33] In 1973,Drew died of heart failure in his Wellesley Hospital room at 78.[3] He requested not to receive a state funeral and had a public family funeral in Toronto.[34] He was buried in his family's plot,next to his first wife,Fiorenza Johnson,in the Woodlawn Cemetery in Guelph.[34]
Honorary degrees
George Drew received honorary degrees from several universities including the following:
↑ Drew, George A. (1930). Canada's fighting airmen. Toronto. MacLean Publishing Company Limited.
1 2 "George Drew Ontario's premier in '40s dies at 78". The Toronto Star. Toronto. 4-Star Edition. 1973-01-04. pp.1, 12–13.
1 2 Duffy, Robert (1973-01-05). "George Drew — served as Premier of Ontario for five years, then led Opposition in Ottawa for eight". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. p.11.
The Ontario New Democratic Party is a social-democratic political party in Ontario, Canada. The party currently forms the Official Opposition in Ontario following the 2018 general election. It is a provincial section of the federal New Democratic Party. It was formed in October 1961 from the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL).
David Lewis was a Canadian labour lawyer and social democratic politician. He was national secretary of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) from 1936 to 1950 and one of the key architects of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1961. In 1962, he was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP), in the House of Commons of Canada, for the York South electoral district. While an MP, he was elected the NDP's national leader and served from 1971 until 1975. After his defeat in the 1974 federal election, he stepped down as leader and retired from politics. He spent his last years as a university professor at Carleton University, and as a travel correspondent for the Toronto Star. In retirement, he was named to the Order of Canada for his political service. After suffering from cancer for a long time, he died in Ottawa in 1981.
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The Co-operative Commonwealth Federation – The Farmer-Labor Party of Ontario, or more commonly known as the Ontario CCF, was a democratic socialist provincial political party in Ontario that existed from 1932 to 1961. It was the provincial wing of the federal Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF). The party had no leader in the beginning, and was governed by a provincial council and executive. The party's first Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) was elected by voters in the 1934 Ontario general election. In the 1937 general election, no CCF members were elected to the Ontario Legislature. In 1942, the party elected Toronto lawyer Ted Jolliffe as its first leader. He led the party to within a few seats of forming the government in the 1943 general election; instead, it formed the Official Opposition. In that election, the first two women were elected to the Ontario Legislature as CCFers: Agnes Macphail and Rae Luckock. The 1945 election was a setback, as the party lost most of its seats in the Legislature, including Jolliffe's seat. The party again became the Official Opposition after the 1948 general election, and defeated the Conservative premier George Drew in his seat, when Bill Temple unexpectedly won in the High Park constituency. The middle and late 1940s were the peak years for the Ontario CCF. After that time, its electoral performances were dismal, as it was reduced to a rump of two seats in the 1951 election, three seats in the 1955 election, and five seats in the 1959 election. Jolliffe stepped down as leader in 1953, and was replaced by Donald C. MacDonald.
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William Horace (Bill) Temple, nicknamed "Temperance Bill" or "Temperance Willie", was a Canadian democratic socialist politician, trade union activist, businessman and temperance crusader. As a youth he worked for the railway. During World War I, and World War II he was a soldier in the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Canadian Air Force. Between the wars, he was a salesman, and then he started a clothing import business. He became a socialist during this period, and joined the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) when it was formed. He ran for political office many times for the CCF, both federally and provincially. The highlight of his political career was in 1948, when he defeated the incumbent premier of Ontario George Drew in his own legislative seat, in the electoral district of High Park, even though the premier's party won the general election with a majority government. His tenure was relatively short, serving only one term, and was defeated in the 1951 provincial election, and went back into the clothing import business. In his later years, he successfully led the political fight to maintain the prohibition on selling alcohol in a section of Toronto's west end, winning three referendums in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. He died in the spring of 1988, a few months before another referendum on lifting the restrictions on alcohol in the area was again defeated, his "last" victory.
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The LeBel Royal Commission was an Ontario Royal Commission set up on 28 May 1945 to look into charges made against the province's premier George A. Drew that he was operating a secret political police. The charges came from Ontario's Official Opposition Leader Edward Bigelow (Ted) Jolliffe, during the 1945 Ontario general election campaign. He made these allegations during a campaign radio speech on 24 May 1945. Drew announced in a radio speech on 26 May that he would call an inquiry, and appointed Mr. Justice A. M. LeBel to lead the commission on 28 May. Jolliffe, and Liberal leader Mitchell Hepburn made offers to withhold from electioneering and have the commission report before the election. Drew refused to either postpone the election, or speed up the commission process. The commission began hearings on 20 June 1945, and heard final arguments on 20 July 1945. The report was issued on 11 October 1945, with LeBel agreeing with much of what Jolliffe charged, but ultimately ruled that the Premier did not have a secret political police reporting to him, mainly due to the lack of direct documented evidence. In the late 1970s, that documented evidence was found, but the provincial government at the time considered the case closed.
The 1948 Progressive Conservative leadership election was held to choose a leader for the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. The convention was held at the Ottawa Coliseum in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Voting occurred on October 2, 1948. Premier of Ontario George A. Drew was elected as the party's new leader. The National Film Board of Canada made a short film about the event for its Eye Witness series.
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