# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Mowat, Oliver

​MOWAT, Sir OLIVER (1820–1903), Canadian statesman, born at Kingston, Upper Canada (now Ontario), on 22 July 1820, was eldest son in a family of three sons and two daughters of John Mowat of Canisbay, Caithness-shire, who had come out to Canada as sergeant with the 3rd Buffs in 1814, had taken his discharge to occupy a grant of land near Kingston, and had married Helen Levack of Caithness in 1819. A younger brother, John B. Mowat, D.D., was professor of Hebrew in Queen's University, Kingston, from 1867 until his death in 1900.
After education at private schools in Kingston, Mowat, who was brought up and remained a presbyterian, was articled in 1836 to (Sir) John Alexander Macdonald [q. v.] as a student-at-law. In Nov. 1840 he left Mr. Macdonald's office for Toronto When, in May 1841, the governor, Lord Sydenham, temporarily moved the seat of government from Toronto to Kingston Mowat followed the court of chancery to that place, and being there called to the bar of Upper Canada in Nov. 1841, was at once admitted into partnership with his principal, Robert Easton Burns. In Nov. 1842 the firm moved back to Toronto with the court of chancery, and from that time until his death Mowat lived almost continuously in Toronto. He rapidly gained distinction in equity practice, and was for many years the acknowledged leader of the chancery bar. He was a bencher of the Law Society of Canada from 1853 until his death, safe from 1864 to 1872, and was made Q.C. in 1856. In January 1866, of the motion of Macdonald, he was appointed by the Taché-Macdonald government one of the commissioners to revise and consolidate the statutes of Upper Canada and such of the other statutes as affected the upper province. At a later date he was also a commissioner for the consolidated of the statutes of Ontario.
Mowat's first incursion into public life was in Dec. 1856, when he was elected an alderman for the city of Toronto; his first entry into the political field was at the general election of 1857, when he was elected to the legislative assembly by the riding of South Ontario. Mowat supported the radical party, which was led by George Brown [q. v. Suppl. I], and advocated a reform of parliamentary representative by population and the secularization of state schools.
In July 1858 the Macdonald-Cartier ministry resigned on a vote censuring the selection of Ottawa as the proposed capital, and Mowat became provincial secretary in the George Brown cabinet, which lived only forty-eight hours. The new ministers had resigned their seats to seek re-election, and the opposition snatched the opportunity to carry a vote of want of confidence. Within a few hours the old Macdonald-Cartier administration was installed in office as the Cartier-Macdonald government, and carried on the government until their defeat in the house shortly after the general elections of 1862. It was meanwhile becoming increasingly evident that some method must be devised to simplify the machinery of government of Canada, which the division between the two provinces hampered. At a great convention of reformers held at Toronto in 1859, which discussed the situation, Mowat ​forcibly presented what appeared to him to be the only possible alternatives, viz. a dissolution of the union between the two provinces, which he would deprecate, or the federation of the two provinces with a local legislature established in each, whereby alone, he held, could representation by population be attained, and the wealthy and more populous province be relieved from the domination of the French minority. He declined office in the John Sandfield Macdonald-Sicotte ministry of 1862, which refused to countenance the principle of representation by population. When the seventh parliament of Canada assembled in 1863, the J. S. Macdonald-Dorion ministry in control left representation by population an open question, and Mowat accepted the office of postmaster-general in the administration. His chief reforms were acts of retrenchment. He cancelled the existing Allan contract for ocean mails, renewing it on much more favourable terms, and he fixed the Grand Trunk railway postal subsidy at $60 a mile in lieu of the $300 to $800 a mile which the company claimed. In 1864, after the accession to office and early defeat of the Taché-John A. Macdonald government, George Brown's proposal of a coalition government for the purpose of 'settling for ever the constitutional difficulties between Upper and Lower Canada' was adopted. Mowat joined the coalition and took part in the conference on federation which met at Quebec (10 to 28 October 1864). Mowat advocated a senate elected for a fixed term, instead of an appointed senate which might prove a mere mechanical device for registering the acts of the party in power.
Mowat's labours on confederation were cut short by his appointment, on 14 Nov. 1864, as one of the vice-chancellors of Ontario. He held that office until Oct. 1872. In 1872, when Edward Blake and Alexander Mackenzie [q. v.], leaders of the Ontario legislature, abandoned, in accordance with the new constitution, local for federal politics, Mowat at their request resigned his judgeship and, re- joining the local legislature as member for North Oxford, became premier of Ontario on 29 Nov. 1872. He remained at the head of the province until 1896, when he entered Dominion politics as a supporter of Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
The enactments for which Mowat was responsible during his twenty-four years' premiership of Ontario aimed, as in the Ballot Act of 1874 and the Manhood Suffrage Act of 1888, at democratising Ontario institutions. At the same time he sought to simplify and cheapen the operation of justice. By the Administration of Justice Acts (1873 and 1874) and the Judicature Acts of 1880 and 1881 he effectively assimilated the practice and procedure of the common law and equity courts. Finally Mowat was responsible for an important series of measures which, checked by the federal veto and sanctioned in six instances on appeal to the privy council, served to define the proper limits of provincial rights under the constitution and rendered Mowat the victorious champion of provincial rights. In the first year of his premiership Mowat claimed the right of the lieutenant-governor-in-council to appoint queen's counsel with precedence in Ontario courts. In 1876 the province secured the right to regulate by legislation companies incorporated whether under a Dominion, British, or foreign charter. Again in 1883 the privy council pronounced, after much litigation, in favour of Mowat's claims on behalf of the province to enact liquor legislation in spite of the general control of trade and commerce vested in the Dominion parliament, and the judgment at the same time declared the power of the provincial legislature to be within prescribed limits 'as plenary and as ample as the imperial parliament in the plenitude of its power possessed and could bestow.' Among other of Mowat's victories was the final delimitation by a decision of the privy council in 1884 of the boundaries of Upper Canada (in Ontario) after a long and heated struggle with the Dominion parliament and with the neighbouring province of Manitoba. The ownership and control of 144,000 square miles of territory were thereby secured to Ontario. Mowat was made K.C.M.G. in 1892 and G.C.M.G. in 1893.
In 1896 Mr. Laurier, the liberal leader of the Dominion, induced Mowat to resign the premiership of Ontario and assist the liberal party in the general elections of that year. The dominant issue was the Manitoba school question, touching the claims of Roman catholics to separate state education, which the Manitoba legislature declined to admit. Mowat was in accord with his leader in advocating a compromise between the catholics and the Manitoba legislature which should not prejudice liberal and unsectarian principles. The result was a victory for Mr. Laurier and his party, and Mowat accepted a seat in the senate, and the office of minister of justice in the Laurier cabinet. In 1897 he retired to ​accept the office of lieutenant-governor of Ontario. In 1898 his health began to fail, but in spite of a partial paralysis he continued his official duties. He died at Government House, Toronto, on 19 April 1903, and was accorded a public funeral in Mount Pleasant cemetery.
Mowat's consistent success as a party leader was due to his tact, political sagacity, and integrity. The province recognised that to him its affairs were safely entrusted. The conservative opposition was powerless in the presence of the popularity and prestige which Mowat gained by his successful championship of provincial rights. In Dominion politics Mowat advocated the policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, while he was an ardent supporter of the British connection. He denounced as 'veiled annexation' Goldwin Smith's proposal that Canada and the United States should maintain a uniform tariff against the world, and free trade between themselves. He was a member of the senate of the university of Toronto (1852–72), president of the Canadian Institute (1864–6), president of the Evangelical Alliance (1867–87), vice-president of the Upper Canada Bible Society (1859–1903), and hon. president of the Canadian Bar Association (1897). He held honorary degrees from Queen's university, Trinity university, and the university of Toronto.
On 19 May 1846 Mowat married Jane, daughter of John and Helen Ewart of Toronto. There were two sons and three daughters from this marriage. The eldest son, Frederick Mowat, is sheriff of the city of Toronto.
There are portraits in the Ontario Legislative Buildings by Robert Harris, C.B.; in Government House, Toronto, by Dixon Patterson; in the National Club, Toronto, and in the board room of the Imperial Life Assurance Company by E. Wyly Grier; and in Sheriff Mowat's house by J. Colin Forbes.
[Sir Oliver Mowat, a biographical sketch by C. R. W. Biggar, K.C., Toronto, 1905; private information.]
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