page_title: R. B. Bennett
section_title: Moving west
hierarchical_section_title: R. B. Bennett / Moving west
caption_attribution_description: R.B. Bennett at the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede.
context_page_description: Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett PC, KC, was a Canadian lawyer, businessman and politician. He served as the 11th prime minister of Canada, in office from 1930 to 1935. He led the Conservative Party from 1927 to 1938.
  Bennett's premiership was marked primarily by the Great Depression that it overlapped and by an unsuccessful initiative to establish an imperial preference free trade agreement. Still, he left lasting legacies in the form of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Bank of Canada, and was regarded even by his political opponents as instrumental in mitigating the worst potential effects of the economic depression in Canada.
  Bennett was born in Hopewell Hill, New Brunswick, and grew up in nearby Hopewell Cape. He studied law at Dalhousie University, graduating in 1893, and in 1897 moved to Calgary to establish a law firm in partnership with James Lougheed.
  Bennett served in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories from 1898 to 1905, and later in the Alberta Legislature from 1909 to 1911. He was the inaugural leader of the Alberta Conservative Party from 1905, resigning upon his election to the House of Commons in 1911.
context_section_description: Despite his election to the Chatham town council, Bennett's days in the town were numbered. He was ambitious and saw that the small community was too narrow a field for him. He was already negotiating with Sir James Lougheed to move to the North-West Territories and become his law partner in Calgary, on Weldon's recommendation. Lougheed was Calgary's richest man and most successful lawyer.
  Bennett moved to Calgary in 1897. A lifelong bachelor and teetotaler (although Bennett was known by select associates to occasionally drink alcohol when the press was not around to observe this), he led a rather lonely life in a hotel and later, in a boarding house. For a while a younger brother roomed with him. He ate his noon meal on workdays at the Alberta Hotel. Social life, such as it was, centred on church. There was, however, no scandal attached to his personal life. Bennett worked hard and gradually built up his legal practice. In 1908 he was one of five people appointed to the first Library Board for the city of Calgary and was instrumental in establishing the Calgary Public Library.
  In 1910, Bennett became a director of Calgary Power Ltd. (now formally TransAlta Corporation) and just a year later he became president. During his leadership projects completed included the first storage reservoir at Lake Minnewanka, a second transmission line to Calgary and the construction of the Kananaskis Falls hydro station. At that time, he was also director of Rocky Mountains Cement Company and Security Trust.
  Bennett developed an extensive legal practice in Calgary. In 1922, he started the partnership Bennett, Hannah & Sanford, which would eventually become Bennett Jones LLP. In 1929–30, he served as national President of the Canadian Bar Association. His successor in that office was Louis St. Laurent, another future Prime Minister.
caption: Patrick Burns and R. B. Bennett at the Calgary Stampede in 1928
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