John Edward Brownlee (1883–1961)

Although not from a farming family himself, John Edward Brownlee rose to political prominence in Alberta through his work on behalf of those agriculturalists on whose backs the province was built. As a youngster in Ontario, Brownlee excelled in school, read voraciously, and soon grew too tall to be vulnerable to those who would harass him for his bookish ways. At 6’4” and presenting a grave demeanor, his was an image that matched in resolve and seriousness the determination with which he led Alberta during difficult times.

After graduating from the University of Toronto with his law degree, Brownlee moved to Calgary, a city then known to reward hard work with great opportunity. In 1908, Brownlee apprenticed with the

prestigious law firm Lougheed, Bennett, Allison and McLaws. In 1912, he married Florence Edy, was called to the bar, and joined the legal firm of Muir, Jephson and Adams. His firm was, in turn, employed by the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), a populist movement that grew into a political party and whose interests Brownlee represented. When the politically inexperienced UFA unexpectedly won a majority government in the 1921 election, the shrewd and pragmatic Brownlee was an astute choice for attorney-general. Over the next four years, Brownlee increasingly ran the government for UFA Premier Herbert Greenfield and upon Greenfield’s resignation in November 1925, was the obvious choice for the province’s fifth premier.

Brownlee’s frugal governance was just what was needed to tackle the province’s debt, and in February of 1926, he was able to announce Alberta’s first budget surplus since before World War I. He ran a series of balanced budgets and led the UFA party to victory in two more elections, those of 1926 and 1930. Brownlee’s government successfully divested the province’s railways, initiated the regulation of petroleum drilling operations, improved labour standards, and promoted cooperative movements; undoubtedly, however, its most significant achievement was successfully concluding in December 1929 negotiations to assume control of the province’s natural resources. With the 1905 Alberta Act, Alberta, like Manitoba and Saskatchewan, had been admitted into Confederation as a second class citizen, lacking the same autonomy over its natural resources that had been granted to the original provinces. For decades, prairie leaders had sought to

remedy the imbalance, and Brownlee, likewise, viewed the quest as his central responsibility. It is thanks to Brownlee’s determined pursuit of the control of natural resources that Alberta was prepared to profit from the petroleum boom that began in the late 1940s.

As Alberta slumped into the Great Depression, the UFA’s inability to stave off the effects of worldwide economic depression resulted in its being swept from power by William “Bible Bill” Aberhardt’s Social Credit movement. Brownlee, himself, had been forced out of government already by a scandal instigated by a young government stenographer and family friend, Vivian MacMillan, who accused Brownlee of seduction. Brownlee denied all charges and launched a countersuit, but the damage was irreversible and forced his resignation in 1934. He retired to private practice in Calgary.