Osias F "Osie" Villeneuve was a longtime politician in Ontario, Canada.
15 Facts About Osie Villeneuve
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Osie Villeneuve served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and the House of Commons of Canada, and was an elected representative almost continuously from the 1940s until his death.
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Osie Villeneuve married Alma MacLeod in 1930, and together they raised three sons.
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Osie Villeneuve played and coached minor league hockey in the 1930s and 1940s, including coaching and managing the Maxville Millionaires for which in part he was inducted into the Glengarry Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.
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Osie Villeneuve spearheaded many local projects, including the Jubilee Rink, the village's first covered rink, and forty years later the Maxville and District Sports Complex to replace the Jubilee.
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Osie Villeneuve was a founding member of the organizing committee for the first Glengarry Highland Games in 1948.
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Osie Villeneuve served on the local school board on council, and was reeve of Maxville in 1948.
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Osie Villeneuve served as a government backbench supporter under Thomas Laird Kennedy and Leslie Frost, and won re-election in the Progressive Conservative landslides of 1951 and 1955.
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Osie Villeneuve resigned from the provincial legislature in May 1957 to run federally, as a candidate of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada.
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Osie Villeneuve served as a backbench supporter of John Diefenbaker's minority government for a year, and defeated Bruneau a second time in the Progressive Conservative landslide of 1958.
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Osie Villeneuve was defeated in the 1962 election, losing to Liberal Viateur Ethier by 2,857 votes.
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Osie Villeneuve then returned to the Ontario legislature in the 1963 election, winning his old seat of Glengarry by 1,363 votes over a Liberal challenger.
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Osie Villeneuve was re-elected in 1967,1971,1975,1977 and 1981, and served as a backbencher in the John Robarts and William Davis governments.
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Osie Villeneuve was never appointed to cabinet at either the federal or provincial levels.
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Osie Villeneuve suffered a heart attack in September 1983 while attending a reunion of former Progressive Conservative MPPs, and died in hospital a few hours later.