Angus Lewis Macdonald
Angus Lewis Macdonald PC QC was a Canadian lawyer, law professor and politician from Nova Scotia. He served as the Liberal premier of Nova Scotia from 1933 to 1940, when he became the federal minister of defence for naval services. He also served in the Canadian Army during the First World War as a lieutenant in Nova Scotia’s 25th battalion.
About Angus Lewis Macdonald in brief
Angus Lewis Macdonald PC QC was a Canadian lawyer, law professor and politician from Nova Scotia. He served as the Liberal premier of Nova Scotia from 1933 to 1940, when he became the federal minister of defence for naval services. He oversaw the creation of an effective Canadian navy and Allied convoy service during World War II. After the war, he returned to Nova Scotia to become premier again. Macdonald’s more than 15 years as premier brought fundamental changes. Under his leadership, the Nova Scotia government spent more than USD 100 million paving roads, building bridges, extending electrical transmission lines and improving public education. He was a classical liberal in the 19th-century tradition of John Stuart Mill. He believed in individual freedom and responsibility and feared that the growth of government bureaucracy would threaten liberty. The Liberal rallying cry, “All’s Well With Angus L.,” was so effective that the Conservatives despaired of ever beating Macdonald. He died in office in 1954 and was buried in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, in a ceremony attended by many of his family and friends. He is buried at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, where he was class valedictorian. He also served in the Canadian Army during the First World War as a lieutenant in Nova Scotia’s 25th battalion. His mother was from a prominent Acadian family on Prince Edward Island and his maternal grandfather was politician Stanislaus Francis Perry. His father’s family had emigrated to CapeBreton from the Scottish Highlands in 1810.
He played rugby, joined the debating team, edited the student newspaper and, in his graduating year, won the gold medal in seven of his eight courses. In February 1916, he joined the 185th battalion, known as the Cape Breon Highlanders, leaving for Britain in October 1916. He spent eight months in Britain recovering from his wound in 1918, just four days before the Armistice. He felt fortunate to have been spared, but his luck ran out when he was hit in Belgium by a German sniper on November 7, 1918. Biographer Stephen Henderson writes that the war had made him less serious and less self-confident. He returned home to his family in 1919 in an abstract principle of ‘the horrible deaths of so many to march in the name of the abstract principle’ Macdonald was born August 10, 1890, on a small family farm at Dunvegan, Inverness County, on Cape Bretton Island. He hoped to enroll next in the Bachelor of Arts program at St Francis Xavier. His family couldn’t afford to pay for a university education so Macdonald obtained a teaching licence and taught for two years to finance his education. Midway through his university studies, he took another year off to earn money teaching. He completed his final term on credit and was required to teach in the university’s high school during 1914–15 to pay off his debt. Macdonald said that Nova Scotians were victims of a national policy that protected the industries of Ontario and Quebec with steep tariffs.
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