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Manitobans Who Made a Difference

(Courtesy of the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections)

Thomas Alexander Crerar was born near Molesworth, Grey Township, Ontario, to William and Margaret Crerar, descendants of Scottish immigrants to Huron County. In 1881, William Crerar gave up his job as a cattle drover and bought some land from the Canadian Pacific Railway, 225 miles (362 kilometres) north of Winnipeg, near Russell, in what became Silver Creek municipality. Thomas Crerar attended school at Portage la Prairie Collegiate until an early frost in 1888 destroyed the family crops, and he was forced to replace his father's hired man. In 1894, Crerar returned to school and received his teaching certificate. A few years of teaching convinced him that he was unsuited for the profession and he quit in 1902. During the late 1890s until 1903, Crerar operated a lumber mill and camp on the slopes of Riding Mountain. He also farmed on land obtained from the Hudson's Bay Company.

Agrarian movements of the late 1880s, aimed at breaking the grain-trade oligopoly which reduced profits to farmers, resulted in the establishment of local farmer-owned elevators. In 1902, the Russell Farmers' Elevator Company was established in Russell, Manitoba. After the first manager was fired for embezzlement in 1904, the elevator company gave the job of manager to Crerar. In 1906, he was elected to the board of directors of the Grain Growers' Grain Company, becoming its president in 1907. Under Crerar, the Grain Growers' Guide was developed as a farmers' journal. He also arranged for the purchase of the failed Manitoba Government elevators between 1916-27. In 1917, the Grain Growers' and the Alberta Farmers' Cooperative Elevator companies joined to form the United Grain Growers' Company, with Crerar as president.

Crerar was an ardent Liberal and was president of the Russell Liberal Association. In 1917, the issue of conscription during World War I split the Sir Wilfrid Laurier-led Liberals and Crerar broke with Laurier. Elected to the House of Commons as a Union Government candidate for Marquette, Crerar joined the Unionist (Conservative-Liberal) Cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden as Minister of Agriculture, responsible for the Wartime Food Control Board. In 1919, following Borden's refusal to lower tariffs on agricultural implements, he resigned his post. Crerar then helped to form the Progressive Party, which was the culmination of Western Canadian farmers' frustrations at feeling exploited by Eastern Canadian business interests and the two traditional political parties, Conservative and Liberal. In the 1921 federal election, the Progressive Party, despite not having a national party organization, won 39 of 43 prairie seats. This was due in large part to the refusal of Liberal candidates to run against them, believing that a coalition government could later be formed by the Liberals and Progressives. After the election, the Progressives refused to take the position of Official Opposition, which damaged both their position and their credibility.

Crerar, in his short time as leader of the Progressives, arranged for some reductions in the federal protective tariff and the reestablishment of the Crow's Nest Pass Agreement, which allowed Western Canadian farmers to ship their produce at a reduced rate. He resigned from the party in 1922 for a number of reasons. First, falling grain prices had forced the United Grain Growers' Company into a financial crisis, and Crerar had to choose between politics and the company. Second, were the internal divisions between the "Manitoba" and "Alberta" factions within the Progressive Party itself, and, in his mind, its unwillingness to be led as a political party. At a more personal level, Crerar's eight-year-old daughter, Aubrey, died from diphtheria. It was a combination of these factors which caused Crerar to resign, and for several years, to refuse all overtures to return to politics.

In 1929, however, Crerar accepted Liberal Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King's offer to join his Cabinet as Minister of Railways and Canals. Crerar was elected in a by-election in 1930, and subsequently resigned his presidency of United Grain Growers'. When the King Government and Crerar personally were defeated by the Conservatives led by Richard Bedford Bennett in the federal election later in 1930, Crerar turned to stock farming with his brother. In the federal election of 1935, though, King won and Crerar, elected for the constituency of Churchill, was named Minister of Mines and Resources. Crerar was also a member of the Cabinet's War and Wheat committees. His relationship to King was sorely tested when, during World War II, Crerar supported conscription for the war effort, a decision the Prime Minister strongly opposed. In 1944, Crerar resigned from the government over proposed post-war social programs, which went against Crerar's ideals of liberalism, individualism, and free enterprise. The following year, he was named to the Senate, a position he held until May 31, 1966. In 1974, Crerar became the first politician awarded the Companion of the Order of Canada. He is a member of the Manitoba Agricultural Hall of Fame.