Stewart, Alan Carl (1893-1958)

Alan Carl Stewart.

Saskatchewan Archives Board S-B3963

Alan Carl Stewart, soldier, lawyer and politician was, as T.C. Douglas said, a “political stormy petrel, a doughty fighter who feared no foe.” Born at Moosomin on September 27, 1893, he was invalided home from World War I: near-fatal injuries at Passchendaele left him with a life-long scar above his left eye. A brilliant criminal lawyer, he served as Yorkton's city solicitor as well as president of the Yorkton Branch of the Canadian Legion and of the Yorkton Board of Trade, and recruited new commercial firms. Serving as town councillor and then as Yorkton's first mayor, Stewart fought every election in a rough-and-tumble manner, speaking without notes. Narrowly defeated in the provincial election of 1925 and in the federal election of 1926, he won election to the Saskatchewan Legislature in 1929. As Minister of Highways, he launched an unprecedented $20 million construction program, laying out a system of numbered highways that criss-crossed Saskatchewan. Defeated in 1934, he was elected as a Unity candidate in 1938. In federal politics, he was defeated as an Independent Liberal in 1945 but elected in 1949. Following four years in Ottawa, war-related ill health forced his retirement; he died in Long Beach, California, on July 26, 1958.

C. Stuart Houston