page_title: John Edward Brownlee sex scandal
section_title: John Brownlee's story
hierarchical_section_title: John Edward Brownlee sex scandal / John Brownlee's story
caption_attribution_description: English: John Caldwell, Vivian MacMillan's would-be fiance and alleged co-conspirator, and Sam MacMillan, her brother, at the Edmonton courthouse where Vivian was suing John Brownlee for seduction.
context_page_description: The John Brownlee sex scandal occurred in 1934 in Alberta, Canada, and forced the resignation of the provincial Premier, John Edward Brownlee. Brownlee was accused of seducing Vivian MacMillan, a family friend and a secretary for Brownlee's attorney-general in 1930, when she was 18 years old, and continuing the affair for three years. MacMillan claimed that the married premier had told her that she must have sex with him for his own sake and that of his invalid wife. She had, she testified, relented after physical and emotional pressure. Brownlee called her story a fabrication, and suggested that it was the result of a conspiracy by MacMillan, her would-be fiancé, and several of Brownlee's political opponents in the Alberta Liberal Party.
  MacMillan and her father sued Brownlee for seduction. After a sensational trial in June 1934, the six-man jury found in favour of the plaintiffs, awarding them $10,000 and $5,000, respectively. In an unusual move, trial judge William Ives disregarded the jury's finding and dismissed the case. The Supreme Court of Canada eventually overturned the decision and awarded MacMillan $10,000 in damages.
context_section_description: Brownlee denied absolutely MacMillan's claims.  He said that there had been no sexual activity between him and MacMillan, likening their relationship instead to that of an uncle and his favourite niece.  To claims that he had induced MacMillan to move to Edmonton and arranged a position for her in the Attorney General's office, he asserted "in the thirteen years I have been in public life I have never promised any person in this Province a position."  He denied having convinced MacMillan to move to Edmonton and stated that he had not even known that she had done so until Christopher Pattinson, Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Edson, told him.  He further claimed that his sex life with Mrs. Brownlee was what he would consider normal for a husband and wife (which was corroborated by his wife).
  He acknowledged that he had been driving MacMillan around the evening of July 5, 1933, when he was followed by Caldwell and MacLean, but gave a dramatically different account of his reasons for doing so.  According to him, there had been talk of MacMillan joining his family at their rental cottage at Sylvan Lake that weekend provided that she could get the necessary time off work, and that evening he called her to see whether or not she had been able to.  During the ensuing phone conversation, MacMillan told him that she had other problems bothering her, and asked if Brownlee would take her for a drive to discuss them.  He agreed to do so, and it was during this drive that he noticed that he was being followed.
  In support of this story, Brownlee pointed to investigational work by Harry Brace, a private detective in the employ of Attorney General John Lymburn.  According to Brace, Caldwell had told at least three witnesses that he expected to soon receive a large amount of money from someone "high up in political life".  He also specifically told one of Brace's agents that he had deliberately set out to frame Brownlee, that in selecting Neil MacLean as his lawyer he had deliberately chosen a Liberal (the Liberals were considered the major opposition to Brownlee's government at the time), and that if the Liberals won the next election there would be "nothing I want I won't be able to get".  Disappointingly for Brownlee, Brace did not uncover evidence that MacMillan was lying about the affair itself: Caldwell, based on his comments to Brace's men, seemed very much under the impression that the affair had occurred exactly as claimed.  Moreover, Brace found that Carl Snell, MacMillan's one-time suitor, claimed to have been told in 1932 that MacMillan was having a consensual affair with the premier.
  Brownlee's defenders called into doubt MacLean's motivation for involvement in the case: according to rumour, MacLean had been involved in a drunk driving incident several years previous in which he had driven his car into a ditch.  When another motorist had pulled him out, MacLean had attempted unsuccessfully to drive away with the chains still attached to his vehicle, for which he was charged.  He had reputedly asked Brownlee, then the Attorney General, to have the charges dropped.  Upon Brownlee's refusal, he had allegedly vowed to "get" him.  Finally, Brownlee made a point of noting that, as a medical student, Caldwell would have been well-positioned to coach MacMillan on her claims about the pills she was taking to avoid pregnancy.  According to Brownlee, the events alleged were a complete fabrication, the result of scheming by an opportunistic young medical student and his impressionable girlfriend, encouraged by a vindictive lawyer and unscrupulous political opponents.
caption: John Caldwell and Sam MacMillan, Vivian's brother, at the courthouse
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "2016", "Image ImageLength": "3000", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "90", "Image YResolution": "90", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:06:11 14:49:38", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "374", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5380", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "605", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "900"}