Angus Lewis Macdonald
Angus Lewis Macdonald , popularly known as 'Angus L.', was a Canadian lawyer, law professor and politician from Nova Scotia. He served as the Liberal premier of Nova Scotia from 1933 to 1940, when he became the federal minister of defence for naval services. He oversaw the creation of an effective Canadian navy and Allied convoy service during World War II. After the war, he returned to Nova Scotia to become premier again. In the election of 1945, his Liberals returned to power while their main rivals, the Conservatives, failed to win a single seat. The Liberal rallying cry, "All's Well With Angus L.," was so effective that the Conservatives despaired of ever beating Macdonald. He died in office in 1954.
Macdonald's more than 15 years as premier brought fundamental changes. Under his leadership, the Nova Scotia government spent more than $100 million paving roads, building bridges, extending electrical transmission lines and improving public education. Macdonald dealt with the mass unemployment of the Great Depression by putting the jobless to work on highway projects. He felt direct government relief payments would weaken moral character, undermine self-respect and discourage personal initiative. However, he also faced the reality that the financially strapped Nova Scotia government could not afford to participate fully in federal relief programs that required matching contributions from the provinces.
Macdonald was considered one of his province's most eloquent political orators. He articulated a philosophy of provincial autonomy, arguing that poorer provinces needed a greater share of national tax revenues to pay for health, education and welfare. He contended that Nova Scotians were victims of a national policy that protected the industries of Ontario and Quebec with steep tariffs forcing people to pay higher prices for manufactured goods. It was no accident, Macdonald said, that Nova Scotia had gone from the richest province per capita before Canadian Confederation in 1867 to poorest by the 1930s.
Macdonald was a classical liberal in the 19th-century tradition of John Stuart Mill. He believed in individual freedom and responsibility and feared that the growth of government bureaucracy would threaten liberty. For him, the role of the state was to provide basic services. He supported public ownership of utilities like the Nova Scotia Power Commission, but rejected calls for more interventionist policies such as government ownership of key industries or big loans to private companies.
Early life and education
Angus Lewis Macdonald was born August 10, 1890, on a small family farm at Dunvegan, Inverness County, on Cape Breton Island. He was the son of Lewis Macdonald and Veronique "Veronica" Perry, and the ninth child in a family of 14. His mother was from a prominent Acadian family on Prince Edward Island and his maternal grandfather was politician Stanislaus Francis Perry. His father's family had emigrated to Cape Breton from the Scottish Highlands in 1810. The Macdonalds were devout Roman Catholics as well as ardent Liberal Party supporters.In 1905, when Macdonald was 15, the family moved to the town of Port Hood, Cape Breton. Macdonald attended the Port Hood Academy. He hoped to enroll next in the Bachelor of Arts program at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, but his family couldn't afford to pay for a university education so Macdonald obtained a teaching licence and taught for two years to finance his education. Midway through his university studies, he took another year off to earn money teaching. He completed his final term on credit and was required to teach in the university's high school during 1914–15 to pay off his debt. Macdonald did well at St. FX. He played rugby, joined the debating team, edited the student newspaper and, in his graduating year, won the gold medal in seven of his eight courses. He was also class valedictorian.
War service
The First World War broke out while Macdonald was earning his university degree. In 1915, he underwent military training in the Canadian Officers Training Corps. In February 1916, he joined the 185th battalion, known as the Cape Breton Highlanders, leaving for Britain in October 1916 where he received further training. Macdonald was finally sent to the front lines in France in May 1918 as a lieutenant in Nova Scotia's 25th battalion. He participated in heavy fighting and on one occasion led his entire company because all of the other officers had been wounded or killed. Macdonald felt fortunate to have been spared, but his luck ran out in Belgium when he was hit in the neck by a German sniper's bullet on November 7, 1918, just four days before the Armistice. Macdonald spent eight months in Britain recovering from his wound. He returned home to his family in Cape Breton in 1919. Biographer Stephen Henderson writes that the war had made him "more serious and less self-confident", but "struck by the willingness of so many to march to horrible deaths in the name of an abstract principle".Life before politics
In September 1919, the 29-year-old Macdonald began studying at Dalhousie Law School in Halifax. During his two years there, Macdonald formed lifelong friendships with students who were to become members of the political elite in the region. Once again, he excelled in athletics, was elected to the Dalhousie students' council, became the associate editor of the student newspaper and led the opposition in the law school's Mock Parliament. He scored firsts in nearly every course and graduated in 1921 with academic distinction.Macdonald was hired by the Nova Scotia government as assistant deputy attorney-general immediately after graduating from law school. He worked mainly as an administrator, although he occasionally appeared in court to help the attorney general prosecute a case.
In 1922, Macdonald became a part-time lecturer at the law school. When he left the attorney-general's office in 1924, he became a full-time professor. Macdonald was a popular and effective teacher. One former student describes him sitting at his desk on the rostrum speaking slowly and deliberately while gazing intently at the ceiling. "The more students disagreed the more Angus encouraged it."
On June 17, 1924, when he was 33, Macdonald married Agnes Foley, a member of a prominent Irish Catholic family. They had worked together in the attorney general's office where Foley served as secretary. Between 1925 and 1936, the Macdonalds had three daughters and a son. Agnes raised the children and ran the household after Macdonald entered politics. Biographer John Hawkins writes she eventually helped her husband win election in a Halifax riding with a significant Irish Catholic population. She had a large circle of friends including members of the powerful Liberal Women's societies of Halifax. Hawkins also notes that Agnes Macdonald was a gifted hostess who loved conversation. "Quick witted, her rapid and varied flow of language contrasted with Angus L.'s deliberate, thoughtful manner of speaking, which some have described as a 'drawl'."
In 1925–26, while teaching at the Dalhousie Law School, Macdonald took additional courses in law at Columbia University in New York, mainly by correspondence. He used these courses as the basis for full-time graduate work at the Harvard Law School in Boston, Massachusetts in 1928. Harvard's faculty members saw the law as an instrument for social improvement. That view was reflected in Macdonald's 1929 doctoral thesis on the responsibility of property holders under civil law.
When the deanship of the law school came open in 1929, Macdonald agonized over whether he should seek the job. He apparently had strong support from several members of the university's board of governors. At the same time however, he was increasingly drawn to politics and accepting the deanship would mean postponing his political ambitions indefinitely. In the end, the job was offered to Sidney Smith, another prominent Canadian academic who accepted on condition that Macdonald remain at the school. Macdonald did stay, but only for one more year. In 1930, he resigned so he would be free to enter politics.
Early political career
Federal campaign, 1930
The federal election in the summer of 1930 gave the 40-year-old Macdonald a chance to run for office. He decided to contest the riding of Inverness in his native Cape Breton. There he faced a Conservative opponent whose style contrasted sharply with his own cool and reserved manner. According to biographer John Hawkins, I. D. "Ike" MacDougall "was a gifted performer who before an audience could cut an opponent's well-marshalled arguments until they fell amid roars of laughter. He was the master of hyperbole, pun and high spirits. He could win a rural audience, not by his logic, but by his performance on the platform". Macdonald campaigned hard, but the trend was against him. The Conservatives led by R. B. Bennett defeated Mackenzie King's unpopular Liberals. And in Inverness, Ike MacDougall was re-elected by the narrow margin of 165 votes. It was to be Macdonald's only election defeat. Afterwards, Macdonald retreated to Halifax where he opened his own private law office in August 1930.Provincial convention, 1930
Macdonald was active in provincial Liberal Party organizational work during the latter part of the 1920s. In 1925, the party had suffered a crushing defeat after 43 years in power. On election day, the Liberals were reduced to three seats in the Nova Scotia legislature. Many believed that the time had come to return the party to its reformist roots. Macdonald worked with other reform-minded members to establish a network of younger Liberals intent on reviving their party.In the 1928 provincial election, the Liberals regained some of their lost popularity in one of the closest votes in Nova Scotia history. The Conservatives remained in power with 23 seats to the Liberals' 20. Economic conditions worsened after the stock market crash of 1929 making it seem increasingly likely that the Liberals would return to power in the next election. Macdonald helped draft a 15-point party platform for approval at a Liberal convention in the fall of 1930. It promised an eight-hour working day and free elementary school textbooks. It also pledged to establish a formal inquiry into Nova Scotia's economic prospects and the province's place within Confederation.
The convention, held on October 1, 1930, proved to be a turning point both for the party and for Macdonald. In a departure from tradition, the party's new leader was chosen by convention delegates instead of Liberal caucus members at the legislature. Two veterans of Liberal politics, both wealthy businessmen, were contesting the leadership. There was little enthusiasm, however, for either. Just as nominations were about to close, a delegate from Truro rose unexpectedly to nominate Macdonald. Surprised, Macdonald at first declined the nomination, then agreed to accept it when he sensed strong support on the convention floor. A few hours later, the 40-year-old Macdonald had won a resounding first-ballot victory to become the new Liberal leader.