31 Facts About Mitchell Hepburn

Mitchell Frederick Hepburn was the 11th premier of Ontario, from 1934 to 1942.

Mitchell Hepburn was the youngest premier in Ontario history, becoming premier at age 37.

Mitchell Hepburn was the only Ontario Liberal Party leader in the 20th century to lead his party to two majorities.

Mitchell Hepburn was accused of the deed and denied it but refused to identify the culprit.

Mitchell Hepburn eventually became an accountant at the bank's Winnipeg branch.

At the outbreak of World War I, Mitchell Hepburn had already enlisted in the 34th Fort Garry Horse but was unable to obtain his parents' consent to sign up for the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

Mitchell Hepburn then became a lieutenant in the 25th Elgin Regiment of the Canadian Militia, and was conscripted to the 1st Battalion in 1918.

Mitchell Hepburn transferred to the Royal Air Force and was sent to Deseronto for training but suffered injuries in an automobile accident that summer, followed by being bedridden by the influenza in the fall, both of which kept him from active service.

Mitchell Hepburn returned to St Thomas to run his family's onion farm.

Mitchell Hepburn represented a type of agrarian democracy that detested Toryism and valued oratory.

Mitchell Hepburn once saw a pile of manure situated in a village square, and proceeded to jump on top of it to give a speech, apologizing to the crowd for speaking from a Tory platform.

Mitchell Hepburn had a free and easy platform manner, his customary attitude being hands plunged in side coat pockets while he wandered about the platform releasing an unfaltering flow of barbed-wire eloquence that no other political speaker could match in rapidity and certainly not in deadliness.

Mitchell Hepburn never consulted a note, never appeared to prepare a speech in advance, and delivered an array of astounding facts and figures with such an air of assurance that his audience seldom thought to question them.

Mitchell Hepburn's premiership achieved international attention, which merited his appearance on Time magazine's cover in 1937.

Mitchell Hepburn made no apologies for doing so, as he noted in a speech in 1938:.

Mitchell Hepburn blamed the debts which he inherited on his predecessors, he added to them and then handed them on to me.

Mitchell Hepburn took an aggressive position with respect to timber licences in Northern Ontario that were being held by companies that would not cut wood on them.

Mitchell Hepburn, then professing a deep concern about radicals among auto workers, was supported by the owners of the plant and General Motors when he organized a volunteer police force to help him put down the strike after Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King had refused to send the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

However, the strike held out, and Mitchell Hepburn capitulated on April 23,1937.

Mitchell Hepburn, thinking that Canada should be doing more to support the war, helped to organize the military districts in Ontario and encouraged men to volunteer when Mackenzie King chose not to introduce conscription.

Mitchell Hepburn supported King's opponent, Arthur Meighen, in a by-election in Toronto in 1942.

Mitchell Hepburn ultimately resigned as premier in October 1942 but continued to serve as Treasurer of Ontario and party leader until the following year.

Mitchell Hepburn finally tendered his resignation as leader, and Nixon was elected the new party leader and was appointed as premier.

Mitchell Hepburn himself was re-elected in his riding as an Independent Liberal while he was calling for a Liberal-Conservative coalition against the burgeoning CCF.

The Liberal caucus unanimously asked Mitchell Hepburn to resume the party's leadership in 1944.

Mitchell Hepburn retired to his farm in St Thomas, where he died of a heart attack in 1953.

Mitchell Hepburn's funeral was attended by five former premiers, and Rev Harry Scott Rodney observed in his eulogy:.

Mitchell Hepburn's personality was complex, as The Globe and Mail noted in its obituary for him:.

Warm-hearted, loyal to his friends, Mitch Mitchell Hepburn was often described as a political paradox.

Mitchell Hepburn loved good times, the company of convivial friends, the telling of a good, if off-colour, story.

Mitchell Hepburn was the first Liberal to become Premier since George William Ross, and was the last Liberal Premier to win two successive majority terms until Dalton McGuinty.