C. D. Howe

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Rt. Hon. C.D. Howe in 1955

Clarence Decatur "C. D." Howe, PC (15 January 1886 – 31 December 1960) was a leading Canadian politician. In the 1940s and 1950s, he was known as the "Minister of Everything."

Early years

Howe was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. By his own words, he was a "Canadian by choice." Howe had family connections on both sides of the border. He was related to Julia Ward Howe, who wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," and to Joseph Howe, the one-time Premier of Nova Scotia and member of Sir John A. Macdonald’s cabinet. After graduation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in science, Howe moved to Canada in 1908 to become the first professor of civil engineering at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. Howe was successful as a professor, but found it dreary and in 1916, he resigned his academic post and established a consulting engineering firm. Recognizing that the small hamlet of Port Arthur, Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior was an ideal terminus, and on his own initiative, he developed a marshy stretch of lake front and built the Port Arthur pier and foundations, despite the brutal weather of the winter of 1917. Howe and Company Engineering set the stage for the future grain port, that is today's Thunder Bay, Ontario seaway port. Howe and Company then turned to construction projects including docks, bridges and factories. Specializing in the construction of towering Prairie grain elevators, they prospered until the Great Depression. The depression hit his business hard.

Politics

Howe was asked to enter politics by William Lyon Mackenzie King's Liberal Party, and was elected in October 1935 in the constituency of Port Arthur. Although he lacked prior political experience, he entered the cabinet, becoming the last Minister of Railways and Canals and the first Minister of Transport.

Canada's first Minister of Transport was particularly interested in establishing a strong Canadian presence in the growing field of civil aviation. Unemployed workers of the "Dirty '30s" built airstrips across the country, and Trans-Canada Airlines, Air Canada's predecessor, was established as a Crown corporation. Howe helped to establish the National Harbours Board and centralize the administration of ports. He reformed the debt-laden CNR and created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In all his departments, his motto was to increase efficiency and accountability. That emphasis would prove to be vitally important during the war years.

All these measures helped to pull the country's transportation network out of the depression, preparing it for the incredible challenge that it would soon face.

Second World War

During the Second World War, Howe played a pivotal role as Minister of Munitions and Supply. Howe wielded extraordinary powers as a cabinet minister to build an efficient war machine. His role in the war effort was recognized by his appointment, in 1946, to the Imperial Privy Council, enabling him to use the honorific of Right Honourable.

Under Howe’s direction, the government created 28 Crown corporations for large scale production of manufactured goods. Production expanded rapidly: by 1942, Canada was producing more than 4,000 aircraft a year, and exports to the United Kingdom were increasing rapidly. To keep the supply of goods flowing, Canada arranged credit for the United Kingdom, and in 1944 exports reached $1.2 billion. By the end of the war Canada ranked fourth among the Allies in terms of war production with 80% of its output going to other military forces, primarily the British. From 1939 to 1941, the number of employees in Canada’s manufacturing sector increased by 50%. The manufacturing-driven growth, however, created regional disparities. Although all the regions of the country grew during the war, the Atlantic and Prairie provinces trailed Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia in employment and growth because of the high concentration of manufacturing industries in these three provinces.

Canada’s war effort of 1939-1945 necessitated a dollar expenditure that was ten times greater than that of the Great War of 1914-1918. The means to deliver the weapons of war fell to the new Department of Munitions and Supply and to C. D. Howe. Within months, he created a multitude of Crown Corporations and Boards that would serve to provide the necessary raw materials, establish manufacturing facilities, and create supply lines to meet the military requirements of Great Britain, the United States, and Canada. Howe’s enthusiasm and drive seemed to transfer into energizing the war effort of the ordinary citizen.

Howe knew that what Canada lacked was not money or resources but "managerial skill." From all over Canada, he recruited his "boys." The press called them the "buck-a-year men," but they were the best in the business and now the business was winning a war.

Industrial wartime expansion reached across the nation. Ship building on both coasts contributed over four hundred vessels ranging from more than one hundred plodding but useful Corvettes for North Atlantic convoy duty to innumerable merchant ships. Arms and munitions factories were converted from peacetime automobile and locomotive production. Industrialist James. E. Hahn rebuilt the John Inglis Company at Long Branch, a Toronto suburb. The facility employed 17,000 workers during the war and turned out more machine guns than any other individual firm in the British Empire. Final totals of Bren guns, Browning aircraft machine guns, and .55-calibre Boys anti-tank rifles, and 9-mm pistols reached some half-million weapons. Hahn’s business acumen was called upon in other war production, specifically aircraft manufacture.

National Steel Car Corporation, headquartered in Hamilton and predominately a manufacturer of railway rolling stock, had begun to produce munitions prior to 1939. They established a massive manufacturing facility in the village of Malton to undertake the construction of the Westland Lysander Army co-operation aircraft and later, the Avro Anson light bomber/trainer for both the RCAF and Great Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF). The Malton plant would become the largest of Canada’s pre-war aircraft factories.

On 14 December 1940, on one of his voyages to England, a U-boat torpedoed C. D. Howe’s ship. Characteristically, Howe took charge of the lifeboat and 34 sailors and passengers. Miraculously, the survivors were rescued by the captain of a tramp steamer who disobeyed orders to come back to the sinking ship. On that trip, Howe had been briefed on future British aircraft projects including the Avro Lancaster. National Steel Car, reformed as Victory Aircraft would become a major industrial concern, producing 3634 Avro aircraft: 3197 Ansons, 430 Lancasters, six Lancastrian transports, one Lincoln bomber and a single York airliner.

By the war's end, the economy had a more highly skilled labour force, as well as institutions that were more conducive to sustained economic growth. When soldiers returned home, many women left their jobs and returned to their traditional role as homemaker. This created immediate employment opportunities for the men.

Postwar

After the war, Howe came to symbolize the Liberal government of Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent, first as Minister of Reconstruction, and then as Minister of Trade and Commerce. Howe maintained close relations with Canadian business leaders, and guaranteed their support of the Liberals, despite their conservative tendencies. Following up on the success of Victory Aircraft, Howe sold the assets of the former Crown corporation to the Hawker Siddeley Group to form A.V. Roe Canada Limited, more commonly known as Avro Canada, born on 2 November 1945. Avro Canada specialized in the design and manufacture of aircraft and engines, creating the first North American jet airliner, the C102 Avro Jetliner (which Howe controversially cancelled) and Canada's first jet fighter, the CF-100 Canuck.

Howe also played an important role in managing the growth of Canadian nuclear research. He expanded the mandate of the National Research Council of Canada during World War II, and oversaw the creation of the Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories in the mid-1940s, moving the work away from the Montreal labs, and hiring many top scientists. He advocated the establishment of the new residential town of Deep River, Ontario in 1945. Howe split off Atomic Energy of Canada Limited into a Crown Corporation in 1952, away from its parent National Research Council of Canada. Nuclear research and nuclear energy development continued apace in Canada during the King and St. Laurent terms, as the National Research Experimental (NRX) reactor (1947) and National Research Universal (NRU) reactor (1957) put Canada at the world's leading edge in these areas of science and engineering.

Howe ran much of the government, and was the second most powerful man in the country, dubbed "Minister of Everything" by supporters and opponents alike. He became well-known for arrogance, however. He described Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons as "children's hour," and was frequently quoted as having said "What's a million?" a phrase he never used in Commons. In the debate on the Trans-Canada Pipeline, Howe tried to force the public-private Pipeline partnership through Parliament by using closure at every stage of the debate, in order to expedite the project. This tactic annoyed the opposition parties, who objected strenuously, delayed its passage, and turned it into a major political issue. The pipeline project, the first for Canada at that time, was eventually built, and proved to be completely sound in every respect.

Howe also personally selected Crawford Gordon in 1952 to take over the presidency of A.V. Roe Canada, when the Royal Canadian Air Force was looking for a new supersonic interceptor aircraft with Mach 2.5 capability that could counter a Soviet bomber threat. Howe supported funding of the projects until the defeat of the St. Laurent government in 1957, although warning Gordon not to spend like it was wartime. Howe had championed the development of the Avro Arrow and its Avro Orenda Iroquois engine (substituted after a Rolls-Royce engine became unavailable). The aircraft and engine project that cost hundreds of millions of dollars was cancelled on 20 February 1959.

Defeat

In part because of the pipeline and Howe's behaviour, perceived as arrogant, two decades of Liberal rule came to an end in a surprise defeat to John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservatives in 1957. Many observers were shocked when Howe himself lost his northern Ontario seat to Port Arthur Collegiate Institute high school teacher Douglas Fisher, later a national newspaper columnist. At the age of 71, after 22 years as a politician, Howe retired from the "public stage" to devote more time to his family.

Legacy

Despite the failures that critics had ascribed to Howe, C. D. Howe is still today viewed as one of the men who made Canada into a modern industrial power. Howe played an important role in setting up many of the pillars of the Canadian economy such as Air Canada, the St. Lawrence Seaway, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and Canadian National Railway. The C.D. Howe Building, the home of Industry Canada in Ottawa and the C. D. Howe Institute, an economic policy think tank, are named after him.

On his passing in 1960, C. D. Howe was interred in the Mount Royal Cemetery in Montreal, Quebec.

References

Bibliography

• Bothwell, Robert and William Kilbourn. C.D. Howe: A Biography. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979. ISBN 0-7710-4535-2.

External links

• Historical information from the Library of Parliament
• Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame