Arthur Sifton
Arthur Lewis Watkins Sifton was a Canadian lawyer, judge and politician who served as the second premier of Alberta from 1910 until 1917. He became a minister in the federal cabinet of Canada thereafter. Born in Canada West, he grew up there and in Winnipeg, where he became a lawyer. He subsequently practised law with his brother Clifford Sifton in Brandon, where he was also active in municipal politics. He moved west to Prince Albert in 1885 and to Calgary in 1889. There, he was elected to the 4th and 5th North-West Legislative Assemblies; he served as a minister in the government of premier Frederick Haultain. In 1903, the federal government, at the instigation of his brother, made Sifton the Chief Justice of the Northwest Territories. After Alberta was created out of a portion of the Northwest Territories in 1905, Sifton became the first Chief Justice of Alberta in 1907 and served until 1910.
In 1910, the Liberal government of Alberta premier Alexander Cameron Rutherford was embroiled in the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway scandal. The Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, George Bulyea, was a Liberal and determined that for the sake of the Alberta Liberal Party, Rutherford had to be pushed aside in favour of a new premier. When other prominent Liberals declined it, the position was offered to Sifton, who accepted it. As premier, Sifton smoothed over the divisions in the party that had caused and been exacerbated by the railway scandal. He made attempts to break with the Rutherford railway policy; when these were rebuffed by the courts, he adopted a course similar to Rutherford's. He unsuccessfully pursued the transfer of rights over Alberta's natural resources from the federal government, which had retained them by the terms of Alberta's provincehood.
While Sifton was premier, the United Farmers of Alberta rose as a political force. Sifton tried to accommodate many of their demands: his government constructed agricultural colleges, incorporated a farmer-run grain elevator cooperative, and implemented a municipal system of hail insurance. Outside of agriculture, the UFA was instrumental in the Sifton government's implementation of some direct democracy measures and the extension of the vote to women.
During the conscription crisis of 1917, Sifton supported the Conservative prime minister, Sir Robert Borden, in his attempt to impose conscription to help win the First World War. He backed the creation of a federal Union government composed of Conservatives and pro-conscription Liberals. In 1917, he left provincial politics and became a cabinet minister in the Union government. Over the next three and a half years, he served briefly in four different ministries and was a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. He died in Ottawa in January 1921 after a brief illness.
Early life
Arthur Sifton was born on October 26, 1858, in Arva, Canada West, to John Wright Sifton and Catherine "Kate" Watkins. He was the older brother of politician Clifford Sifton. He attended public schools across southern Ontario, culminating with a boys' school in Dundas and high school in London. His father was a devout Methodist and a staunch Reformer and, later, Liberal. These allegiances permeated his home life; the Sifton household was often visited by clergy, laity, businessmen, lawyers, and politicians. In 1874 or 1875, John Sifton won contracts for preliminary construction work on the Canadian Pacific Railway and moved the family to Winnipeg, where Arthur completed high school at Wesley College. Following his graduation, he and Clifford attended Victoria College, then located in Cobourg, Ontario. In 1880, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. While in Cobourg, he was not a devoted student: he skipped many classes, and was judged by his classmates to be "intellectually, morally, physically and erratically preeminent in virtue and otherwise, especially otherwise".Upon graduation, Arthur Sifton returned to Winnipeg to article with Albert Monkman until 1881, when he followed his father to Brandon. John hoped to take advantage of a local real estate boom; nominally, Arthur was running a Brandon branch of Monkman's law firm, though he had not yet finished his articling and was accordingly unqualified to practise law. On September 20, 1882, he married Mary Deering of Cobourg; the pair had two children, Nellie Louise Sifton and Lewis Raymond St Clair Sifton. In 1883, he wrote and passed his bar exam and joined Clifford's Brandon law firm, now styled Sifton and Sifton.
University of Alberta historian David Hall describes the next phase of Sifton's life as "shrouded in mystery". For reasons that are not clear, in 1885 Sifton dissolved his partnership with his brother and moved his family to Prince Albert. In 1885, Prince Albert's prospects did not appear bright, as it had been bypassed by the CPR line. Regardless, Sifton practised law and was in 1885 made a notary public. Three years later, he earned a Master of Arts from Victoria College and a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Toronto. In 1889, he relocated again, to Calgary; there is some suggestion that this move was for the sake of his wife's health. There he opened a law office, worked in the office of the city solicitor, and became a partner in the firm of Sifton, Short, and Stuart. At one point he was a crown prosecutor. In 1892, he was appointed Queen's Counsel.
Early political career
Sifton's first foray into politics was in 1878, when he campaigned for the introduction of prohibition under the auspices of the Canada Temperance Act in the Manitoba electoral districts of Lisgar and Marquette. His first bid for elected office took place in 1882, when he was elected to Brandon's first city council. He was re-elected in 1883, and did not seek re-election at the conclusion of this second term, though he did briefly consider running for mayor before concluding that he had insufficient support to be elected. He also served on the local school board. When his brother Clifford became Wilfrid Laurier's Minister of the Interior in November 1896, Sifton advised him on Liberal Party affairs in western Canada. This advice included suggested patronage appointments, one of which was an unimplemented proposal that Arthur himself be appointed chief justice of the Northwest Territories. In 1898, Sifton re-entered politics—Hall speculates to increase his chances at a judgeship—by challenging Robert Brett, the long-time Member of the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories for Banff, in the 1898 territorial election. Election day returns showed Sifton with a plurality of thirty-six votes, but by the time contested ballots were dealt with this had turned into a majority of two votes for Brett. Sifton successfully challenged this result in court, and in the ensuing by-election he defeated Brett by a comfortable margin. One oft-repeated anecdote from the campaign involved a campaign forum for which Brett was late. After giving his own speech, Sifton offered to give the still-absent Brett's speech as well, since he had heard it so many times. He did so, and when Brett eventually arrived to give a speech nearly identical to the one Sifton had given on his behalf he was puzzled by the audience's amusement.Having defeated Brett, Sifton was immediately one of the area's most prominent Liberals, and he was named president of the District of Alberta Liberals shortly thereafter. In 1901, Clifford Sifton appointed James Hamilton Ross, Northwest Territories Treasurer and Minister of Public Works, as Commissioner of Yukon. It fell to Northwest Territories Premier Frederick William Gordon Haultain to fill the ensuing vacancy and, to preserve the delicate non-partisan balance of his administration, he had to pick a successor who was, like Ross, a Liberal. The role fell to Sifton. Soon after his appointment, Clifford offered him his sought-after position of Northwest Territories Chief Justice. Arthur declined on the basis of his recently assumed ministerial duties, but he made it clear that he was still interested in receiving the judicial post eventually.
As minister, Sifton had to cope with increasing expenses and with grants from the federal government that did not keep pace. He dealt with this through support for territorial autonomy—the creation of one or more new provinces from the Northwest Territories. Campaigning on this position, he was re-elected in the 1902 territorial election. Months later, however, T. H. Maguire retired as territorial chief justice, and this time Sifton accepted his brother's offer of the position. He resigned his political offices in January 1903.
Career as a jurist
Despite the accusations of nepotism that greeted his appointment on January 3, 1903, Sifton fast became a well-respected judge. He served as chief justice of the Northwest Territories until September 16, 1907, when the Supreme Court of Alberta was established, whereupon he headed this new court, sitting in Calgary as the first Chief Justice of Alberta. He was notoriously difficult for barristers to read: he generally heard arguments expressionlessly smoking a cigar, and it was as a judge that he first acquired his long-time nickname of the Sphinx for his inscrutability. In one trial, he sat apparently vigorously taking notes during both sides' lengthy closing arguments and, once they concluded, immediately delivered his judgment. The bewildered lawyers wondered what he had been writing down, since he had obviously made up his mind before closing arguments; once Sifton had left the courtroom, they found their answer in the form of page after page covered with the judge's signature. He rarely recorded his ratio decidendi but, despite this, few of his decisions were overturned on appeal. It has also been argued that his fellow judges had difficulty ruling on appeals from his decisions specifically because he rarely provided reasons. Much of his work was in criminal law, dealing especially with theft of livestock. By the end of his judicial career, he had convicted as many Americans as Canadians. His rulings were generally concerned with practicalities rather than legal theory, based more on social morality than legal precedent, and he did not establish any important precedents.In 1907, Sifton was one member of a three-member commission assigned to investigate labour unrest between coal miners and mine operators. His colleagues were mining executive Lewis Stockett and miners' union executive William Haysom. Miners' demands included increased wages, a reduction in working hours to eight per day, the posting of mine inspection reports, the isolated storage of explosives, the use of non-freezing explosives, and semi-monthly rather than monthly pay. The mine operators objected to this last point on the basis that many miners did not report to work the day after payday, and it was thus desirable to keep paydays to a minimum. The commission recommended that children under sixteen should not be allowed to work in mines, that inspectors should post their reports, that mine sites should have bath houses, and that ventilation inspection should be improved. It also recommended that Albertans keep a supply of coal on hand during the summer for winter use. The commission was silent on wages, the operation of company stores, and the incorporation of mine unions. It made no recommendation about working hours, but Premier Alexander Rutherford's government legislated an eight-hour day anyway.
He resigned from the bench on May 25, 1910, to become Premier.