Arthur Meighen ( MEE-ən; June 16, 1874 – August 5, 1960) was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the ninth prime minister of Canada from 1920 to 1921 and from June to September 1926. He led the Conservative Party from 1920 to 1926 and from 1941 to 1942.
Meighen was born in Anderson, Ontario. His family came from County Londonderry, Ireland. He studied mathematics at the University of Toronto, and then trained to be a lawyer. After qualifying to practise law, he moved to Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. Meighen entered the House of Commons of Canada in 1908, and in 1913 was appointed to the Cabinet of Prime Minister Robert Borden. Meighen prominently served as solicitor general, minister of the interior, and superintendent-general of Indian affairs.
In July 1920, Meighen succeeded Borden as Conservative leader and prime minister – the first born after Confederation. Meighen suffered a heavy defeat in the 1921 election to Mackenzie King and the Liberal Party. Meighen lost his seat but re-entered Parliament through a 1922 by-election and remained Opposition leader. In the 1925 election, the Conservatives won a plurality of seats, just eight short of a majority government, but Mackenzie King decided to hold onto power with the support of the Progressive Party. Meighen's brief second term as prime minister in 1926 came about as the result of the "King–Byng Affair," being invited to form a ministry after Mackenzie King was refused an election request and resigned. He soon lost a no-confidence motion, however, and faced another federal election. Meighen lost his own seat, and the Conservatives lost 24, as Mackenzie King's Liberals re-took power.
After losing the 1926 election, Meighen resigned as party leader and quit politics to return to his law practice. He was appointed to the Senate in 1932, and under Prime Minister R. B. Bennett served as leader of the Government in the Senate and minister without portfolio until 1935. In 1941, Meighen became leader of the Conservatives for a second time, following Robert Manion's resignation. Meighen unsuccessfully attempted to re-enter the House of Commons in a by-election for York South and resigned as leader shortly thereafter. He returned to practising law afterwards.
Meighen was born on a farm near the hamlet of Anderson in Blanshard Township, Ontario, to Joseph Meighen and Mary Jane Bell. He attended primary school at Blanshard public school in Anderson, where, in addition to being the grandson of the village's first schoolmaster, he was an exemplary student.
In 1892, during his final high school year at St. Marys Collegiate Institute (which later became North Ward Public School before being renamed in his honour to Arthur Meighen Public School), Meighen was elected secretary of the literary society and was an expert debater in the school debating society in an era when debating was in high repute. He took first class honours in mathematics, English, and Latin.
Meighen then attended University College at the University of Toronto, where he earned a B.A. in mathematics in 1896, with first-class standing. While there, he met and became a rival of William Lyon Mackenzie King; the two men, both future prime ministers, did not get along especially well from the start. Meighen then earned his teaching qualifications from the Ontario Normal College.
Meighen married Jessie Isabel Cox, a schoolteacher, in 1904. The couple had two sons and one daughter: Theodore (1905–1979), Maxwell (1908–1992), and Lillian (1910–1993). Their grandson Michael Meighen is a Canadian former senator, lawyer and cultural patron.
Isabel Meighen died at the age of 103 and was interred next to her husband in the St. Marys Cemetery in the town of St. Marys, Ontario.
Meighen moved to Manitoba shortly after finishing his LLB at Osgoode Hall Law School. Early in his professional career, Meighen experimented with several professions, including those of teacher, lawyer, and businessman, before becoming involved in politics as a member of the Conservative Party. In public, Meighen was a first-class debater, said to have honed his oratory by delivering lectures to empty desks after class. He was renowned for his sharp wit.
Meighen established a law practice in Portage la Prairie, and was briefly a partner with Toby Sexsmith.
Early political career (1908–1913)
Meighen was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1908, at the age of 34, defeating incumbent John Crawford when he captured the Manitoba riding of Portage la Prairie. In 1911, Meighen won re-election, this time as a member of the new governing party. He won election again in 1913, after being appointed as solicitor general.
Meighen served as solicitor general from June 26, 1913, until August 25, 1917, when he was appointed minister of mines and secretary of state for Canada. He was responsible for implementing mandatory military service during the Conscription Crisis of 1917. Meighen's portfolios were again shifted on October 12, 1917, this time to the positions of minister of the interior and superintendent of Indian affairs.
Meighen was re-elected in the December 1917 federal election, in which Prime Minister Robert Borden's Unionist (wartime coalition) government defeated the opposition Laurier Liberals over the conscription issue.
As minister of the interior, Meighen steered through Parliament the legislation to consolidate several insolvent railways into the Canadian National Railway Company, which continues today.
In 1919, as acting minister of justice and senior Manitoban in Borden's government, Meighen helped to subdue the Winnipeg General Strike. Shortly after the strike ended, he enacted the Section 98 amendments to the Criminal Code to ban association with organizations deemed seditious. Though Meighen has often been credited by historians with instigating the prosecution of the Winnipeg strike leaders, in fact he rejected demands from the Citizens' Committee that Ottawa step in when the provincial government of Manitoba refused to prosecute. It took the return to Ottawa in late July 1919 of Charles Doherty, Minister of Justice, for the Citizens' Committee to get federal money to carry forward their campaign against labour.
Meighen was re-appointed Minister of Mines on the last day of 1920.