Richard Gavin Reid was a Canadian politician. He served as the sixth Premier of Alberta from 1934 to 1935. He was the last member of the United Farmers of Alberta to hold the office. Reid was born near Glasgow, Scotland. He worked as a wholesaler and farmhand before moving to Alberta in 1903.
About Richard Gavin Reid in brief
Richard Gavin Reid was a Canadian politician. He served as the sixth Premier of Alberta from 1934 to 1935. He was the last member of the United Farmers of Alberta to hold the office. Reid was born near Glasgow, Scotland. He worked a number of jobs as a young adult, including wholesaler, army medic, farmhand, lumberjack, and dentist. Reid served in South Africa as a Lance-Sergeant from 1900 to 1902 during the Second Boer War, doing hospital duty, before returning to Scotland. Reid’s political career began with four years on the municipal council of Buffalo Coulee, around present-day Vermilion. In 1923, Reid moved out of the UFA caucus and became Provincial Treasurer, where he perpetuated his fiscal conservatism across the government. He never returned to political life; he lived forty-five years after his defeat, but these years were spent in obscurity; he was president of the Battle River Political Association, of which he became president. He died in Calgary, Alberta, on November 25, 1967. He is buried in the Calgary Cemetery, next to his wife, Marion Stuart, who he married in 1919. He had three sons and two daughters, all of whom were born in Alberta. Reid is buried near his wife’s home in the town of Vermilions, in Alberta’s east-central region, near the city of Stony Plain. Reid died on November 26, 1967, at the age of 89. He left behind a wife and three children, and a son and daughter-in-law, both of whom are still living in Canada. Reid also had a son, David Reid, who was born in Calgary and died in Edmonton, Alberta in 1989.
Reid had a daughter, Mary Reid, and one son, Richard Reid, Jr., who was also a politician and served in the Alberta House of Assembly. Reid worked as a wholesaler and farmhand before moving to Alberta in 1903. In 1921, he was nominated as a UFA candidate in the 1921 provincial election. The UFA won the election, and Reid was elected to the legislature. In the cabinets of Premiers Herbert Greenfield and John Edward Brownlee, he established a reputation for competence and fiscal conservatism. When a sex scandal forced Brownlee from office in 1934, Reid was the caucus’ unanimous choice to succeed him as Premier. When Reid took office, Alberta was experiencing the Great Depression. Reid took measures to ease Albertans’ suffering, but believed that inducing a full economic recovery was beyond the capacity of the provincial government. In this climate, Alberta voters were attracted to the economic theories of evangelical preacher William Aberhart, who advocated a version of social credit. Despite Reid’s claims that Aberhart’s proposals were economically and constitutionally unfeasible, Social Credit routed Reid’s party in the 1935 election. Reid did not retain a single seat in the 1926 and 1930 elections. He also proposed a program of eugenics through the sterilisation of the mentally handicapped, which in 1928 led to the Sexual Sterilization Act of Alberta.
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