Andrew Brewin

Andrew Brewin QC
Member of Parliament for Greenwood
In office 1962–1979
Preceded by	James Macdonnell
Succeeded by	Riding redistributed into Beaches and York East
Personal details
Born	Francis Andrew Brewin (1907-09-03)3 September 1907 Brighton, England
Died	21 September 1983(1983-09-21) (aged 76)
Political party	Co-operative Commonwealth Federation New Democratic Party
Spouse	Peggy Biggar ​ (m. 1935)​
Residence(s)	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Profession	Lawyer

Francis Andrew Brewin QC (September 3, 1907 – September 21, 1983) was a lawyer and Canadian politician and Member of Parliament. He was the grandson of Liberal cabinet minister Andrew George Blair. His son John Brewin also served in the House of Commons of Canada.

Biography

Born in Brighton, England, Brewin was a stalwart in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and ran numerous times at the federal and provincial levels in the 1940 and 1950s. As a lawyer in the 1940s, he was retained by the Co-operative Committee on Japanese Canadians to contest the federal government's deportation orders affecting thousands of Japanese Canadians. Led by Brewin, the "Japanese Canadian Reference Case" was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada and later, on appeal, by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Brewin was also retained by a committee of Japanese Canadians who had been detained during the Second World War as "enemy aliens" in order to try to have their property restored. He succeeded in persuading the government to call a royal commission to investigate the question.

In 1945, he was asked by Ontario CCF leader Ted Jolliffe to be co-counsel during the infamous LeBel Royal Commission that was looking into whether or not Ontario's premier at the time was employing a secret political police force. He was, for a time, the President of the Ontario CCF and was a candidate for the leadership of the Ontario CCF at the party's 1953 leadership convention, but lost to Donald C. MacDonald.

Brewin stood as a CCF candidate several times, starting with the 1945 Canadian federal election in the riding of Toronto—St. Paul's, but was unsuccessful. He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada on behalf of the CCF's successor, the New Democratic Party. Brewin sat as Member of Parliament for the Toronto riding of Greenwood from the 1962 election until his retirement in 1979.

Coming from the theological tradition of figures such as Richard Hooker, F. D. Maurice, and William Temple, Andrew Brewin considered himself a Christian socialist and wrote a number of books and pamphlets on the topic. He was a member of the Fellowship for a Christian Social Order and the League for Social Reconstruction.

Andrew Brewin wrote the book Stand on Guard: The Search for a Canadian Defence Policy, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1965, that explored Canada's military's changing role in the mid-twentieth century, including its participation in the then new concept of United Nations peacekeeping.

Brewin died on 21 September 1983.

Electoral record

1958 Canadian federal election: Davenport, Toronto
Party	Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Progressive Conservative	M. Douglas Morton	12,117	48.6	+7.8
	Liberal	Paul Hellyer	7,872	31.5	+1.3
	Co-operative Commonwealth	F. Andrew Brewin	4,963	19.9	-9.2
Total valid votes			24,952	100.0

1957 Canadian federal election: Davenport, Toronto
Party	Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Progressive Conservative	M. Douglas Morton	8,989	40.7	-0.4
	Liberal	Paul Hellyer	6,665	30.2	-2.1
	Co-operative Commonwealth	F. Andrew Brewin	6,414	29.1	+6.2
Total valid votes			22,068	100.0

See also

• Internment of Japanese Canadians

References

Bibliography

• Abella, Irving Martin (1973). Nationalism, Communism, and Canadian Labour: The CIO, the Communist Party, and the Canadian Congress of Labour, 1935–1956. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-6150-8.
• Bangarth, Stephanie (2008). Voices Raised in Protest: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942–1949. Victoria, British Columbia: University of British Columbia Press.
• Brewin, Andrew (1965). Stand on Guard: The Search for a Canadian Defence Policy. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart. OCLC 490764486.
• Brewin, John (1999). Francis Andrew Brewin: "He Who Would Valiant Be"; The Makings of a Canadian Anglican Christian Socialist (PDF) (MTS thesis). Vancouver: Vancouver School of Theology. ISBN 978-0-612-47521-2.
•  ———  (2000). "Francis Andrew Brewin, 'He Who Would Valiant Be': The Makings of a Canadian Anglican Christian Socialist". In Guenther, Bruce L. (ed.). Historical Papers. Canadian Society of Church History. pp. 73–92. ISBN 978-0-9696744-0-5. ISSN 0848-1563. Retrieved 20 February 2019.
• Wright, Robert A. (1990). "The Canadian Protestant Tradition, 1914–1945". In Rawlyk, G. A. (ed.). The Canadian Protestant Experience, 1760 to 1990. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 139–197. ISBN 978-0-7735-1132-3.

Archives

Francis Andrew Brewin fonds at Library and Archives Canada.

External links

• Andrew Brewin – Parliament of Canada biography