John A. Gamble
John Albert Gamble QC, LLB was a Canadian politician. He served in the House of [Commons of Canada] as a Progressive Conservative from 1979 until 1984.
Personal
Gamble was born in Perth. He worked as a tax lawyer before his political career and was director of the Unionville Home Society. He died in 2009 from leukemia in Markham.Political
Gamble became a Member of Parliament after his victory in the Canadian federal election|1979 federal election] defeating then Liberal incumbent Member of Parliament, Barney Danson, and re-elected in 1980, representing the riding of York North.He had a rocky relationship with PC leader Joe Clark. He was a candidate to succeed Clark at the Progressive Conservative leadership election|1983 Progressive Conservative leadership convention], but won only seventeen votes on the first ballot, placing seventh out of eight candidates, and was eliminated. Gamble was known for his extreme anti-communist views. He became so unpopular that he was one of only two Progressive Conservative MPs to lose their seat in the 1984 general election, which produced a Progressive Conservative landslide, one of the largest majorities in the history of the Canadian House of Commons. Gamble lost to independent candidate Tony Roman, who won support from Liberals dissatisfied with their candidate and Tories who wanted to defeat Gamble.
After failing to win the Progressive Conservative nomination for the new riding of Markham, Gamble ran without affiliation in the 1988 election in that district. He received less than five percent of the vote and came in a distant fourth place, behind Progressive Conservative candidate Bill Attewell. On May 31, 1993, Gamble won the Reform Party's nomination in Don Valley West for the 1993 federal election, but was expelled by the party prior to the election because of his links to far-right extremists such as Paul Fromm, Ron Gostick, Wolfgang Droege, and the Heritage Front.
In the 1980s, Gamble was involved with the hard-right World Anti-Communist League as head of its affiliate the "Canadian Freedom Foundation". According to a report by the Security Intelligence Review Committee, Paul Fromm assisted Gamble in this WACL work. Gamble was later accused of having a role in the diversion of Iran arms profits to the Contras.