John E Brownlee: A Biography

David E. Smith is a professor of political Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan and the author of Building a Province: A History of
Saskatchewan in Documents and The Invisible Crown.

This biography is drawn from the author’s doctoral dissertation,
completed in 1981 at Queen’s University. In published form it has lost
its scholarly apparatus (footnotes, for example) but gained a dust
jacket peppered with superlatives—“Alberta’s greatest premier,”
“the strongest voice in the West,” “Canada’s hottest scandal.”

Humorless (“cool reserve”), antipolitical (“[g]overnments are
nothing but big businesses”), self-righteous (“[m]en who are hungry
do not act in this way [go on strike]”), Brownlee’s personality in
office is of a type that gives politicians a bad name. A corporate
lawyer, attorney general in the first United Farmers of Alberta
government, and then premier (1925–34), Brownlee appears to have had
no life outside the boardroom, courtroom, or cabinet office: this
biographer describes no interests, few friendships, and a desiccated
marriage.

The story told is the familiar Alberta saga: the rise and fall of the
wheat pool, the transfer of natural resources, the confrontation between
the mesmeric William Aberhart and the uncomprehending UFA leaders. The
only spark of humanity is the astounding and—this book
notwithstanding—still inexplicable charge that at age 50, Brownlee had
been carrying on a three-year sexual relationship with a young woman and
family acquaintance half his age. Foster labels the affair “a vicious
character assassination” motivated by political intrigue, but agrees
that a “sexual relationship of some description” probably existed.
Although vindicated at trial, Brownlee lost on appeal.

His political career destroyed, Brownlee resigned; soon after that, the
UFA was crushed by Social Credit. He continued his work with the
farmers’ organizations and between 1948 and 1961 served as president
of the United Grain Growers Limited.