newton rowell

Newton Wesley Rowell (November 1, 1867-November 22, 1941) was a Canadian lawyer and politician and leading lay figure in the Methodist church. Rowell led the Ontario Liberal Party from 1911 to 1917 and put forward a platform advocating temperance. Rowell's Liberals failed to oppose the Whitney government's passage of Regulation 17 which restricted the teaching of the French language in schools alienating the province's French-Canadian minority. In 1917 Rowell, a supporter of conscription during World War I left the Ontario legislature to join the national Unionist government of Sir Robert Borden serving as President of the Privy Council of Canada and, later, as Canada's first Minister of Health. Rowell did not run for re-election in 1921. After the war Rowell served as a Canadian delegate to the League of Nations and became involved in international affairs. He also helped lead the Methodists into a merger with Presbyterians to form the United Church of Canada. In 1936 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Ontario. He is also noted for being the first chair of the 1937 Rowell-Sirois Commission into Dominion-Provincial economic relations and for being a founding leader of the United Church of Canada. Rowell was the maternal grandfather of former Lieutenant Governor of Ontario Hal Jackman and current Senator Nancy Ruth. His daughter Mary wed Harry Jackman in 1930.

Preceded by:
A.G. MacKay

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