Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada
What was the position of Edgar Nelson Rhodes from 1917 to Dec 1921?
Edgar Nelson Rhodes Edgar Nelson Rhodes , ( January 5 , 1877 – March 15 , 1942 ) was a Canadian parliamentarian from Nova Scotia . He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1908 as a member of the Conservative Party . In January 1917 , he became Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada when his predecessor , Albert Sévigny , was appointed to the Canadian Cabinet . Rhodes was retained in the position following the 1917 election that fall , becoming the third Speaker since James Cockburn to preside over more than one Parliament . In 1921 , he was made a member of the Queens Privy Council for Canada before retiring from politics to become president of the British-American Nickel Company , whose previous president had been James Hamet Dunn . The company failed in 1925 , and he returned to provincial politics . Prior to the 1925 provincial election , he was asked to become leader of the Nova Scotia Conservative Party after the leader of the party , W . L . Hall , was assaulted on the waterfront . Rhodes took over the party and led it to victory in the 1925 election . The Conservatives defeated a Liberal government that had been in power for forty-three years but had been , in its last years , wracked by an economic downturn and severe labour unrest among miners in Cape Breton . Rhodes ran on a Maritime Rights platform , promising to curtail federal influence and stop the exodus of people from the province . The Tories more than doubled their seats in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly , winning forty out of forty-three seats . An important factor in their victory was the failure of the governing Liberals to resolve a long strike by the provinces coal miners . When Cape Breton coal miner William Davis was killed by company police in a confrontation on June 11 , voters looked to the Tories for solutions . Rhodes engineered a settlement of the dispute and appointed a royal commission . The new government later introduced pensions for teachers and allowances for widowed mothers . His government also abolished the Legislative Council , the provinces appointed Upper House , but first had to go to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council to obtain permission to appoint enough new members to the Council to secure a vote for its abolition . The Rhodes government was re-elected in 1928 with a reduced majority . He returned to federal politics to become Minister of Fisheries under Prime Minister R.B . Bennett . From 1932 to 1935 , he served as federal Finance Minister , and , despite the Great Depression , handed down austere budgets that increased taxes and reduced spending . He was appointed to the Senate of Canada three months before the 1935 federal election that routed Bennetts government . He remained a Senator until his death in 1942 in Ottawa . He is buried in Ottawas Beechwood Cemetery . On July 12 , 1905 , he married Mary Grace Pipes , daughter of William Thomas Pipes , Rhodes law partner and Premier of Nova Scotia from 1882 to 1884 . They had one son , Edgar Nelson , and one daughter , Helen Sybil . References . - Edgar Nelson Rhodes fonds , Library and Archives Canada