Mowat, then for James David Edgar*, and only on the third ballot for Laurier. Several years later, however, in a letter of 1
conference at Quebec, chaired by Oliver Mowat of Ontario. There they opposed a Manitoba scheme that would have weakened
*, Premier Oliver Mowat’s Catholic lieutenant, and his attack on clerical interference in provincial and Toronto school
Mowat].
On 1 Oct. 1887 Burbidge became the first justice of the
Oliver Mowat, he never held a cabinet position though he sat on several committees, including railways, and was a
was recognized as an adviser of Sir Oliver Mowat, premier of Ontario from 1872 to 1896, and of George
acclamation or with comfortable majorities. Passed over three times for a place in the cabinet of Liberal premier Oliver Mowat, he had to be satisfied with terms as speaker (1880–86) and chairman of the public
Mowat; in Ottawa he became such a staunch supporter of Sir John A. Macdonald* that most of his contemporaries
visibility was rewarded. On 1 May 1888 he was named minister of agriculture in Oliver Mowat’s government, a new
Mowat to make him minister of agriculture after Charles Alfred Drury was defeated in the
Mowat, and took part in the election of 1879, “editing the literature of the campaign, and addressing public meetings.” In 1880 he was appointed to the Ontario agricultural commission, an
Mowat’s Liberal government. The judge became a personal friend of Mowat, and in 1876 the premier appointed him a member of the commission that produced the Revised statutes of Ontario
Mowat had been appointed. Judicial preferment was reserved for politicians, wrote Gwynne; his seven years of public service as a railway promoter counted for nothing. “Responsible Government
Mowat’s government (he reputedly introduced 150 public and private bills, many of them amendments), but he also paid careful attention to those pragmatic and occasionally unpleasant details of
government of Oliver Mowat had produced early legislation relating to the functioning and regulation of insurance
Mowat during the late 1870s, when Ontario’s future seemed threatened both by the population drain to Manitoba and by the attraction the west
*’s nomination in an election which pitted Macdonald against Oliver Mowat