1926 Ontario general election
The 1926 Ontario general election was the 17th general election held in the Province of Ontario, Canada. It was held on December 1, 1926, to elect the 112 Members of the 17th Legislative Assembly of Ontario ("MLAs"). Background. The United Farmers of Ontario decided to withdraw from electoral politics after having been defeated in the 1923 election, and most of its MPPs redesignated themselves as Progressives with former UFO Attorney-General William Edgar Raney becoming party leader. Nevertheless, several MPPs, including Raney himself, continued to run as candidates endorsed by local UFO associations. Leslie Oke and  Beniah Bowman were opposed to Raney's leadership as he was not a farmer. They were also opposed to the creation of a new Progressive Party which would not focus exclusively on farmers' issues, so they chose to remain as UFO MPPs. Bowman later resigned from the legislature before the election. The fracture of the UFO, together with a large number of resignations from MPPs who chose to run federally in the elections of 1925 and 1926, significantly changed the composition of the Assembly: Redistribution of seats. A 1925 Act provided for the redistribution of the Legislative Assembly into 112  ridings for the election. The dual-member ridings in the City of Toronto, in effect since the 1914 election, were abolished and replaced by single-member seats: Beaches was drawn out from York East, and High Park from York West. There were other changes made to ridings elsewhere in the Province: A further Act in 1926 merged Simcoe South and Simcoe West into Simcoe Southwest, and divided Cochrane into Cochrane North and Cochrane South. Summary. The Ontario Conservative Party, led by Howard Ferguson, was re-elected for a second term in government. The principal issue of the campaign was the  government's proposal to repeal the "Ontario Temperance Act", replacing prohibition with government control of liquor sales. The Liberal and Progressive parties both campaigned against repeal, and one of Ferguson's ministers, William Folger Nickle, resigned from the cabinet and ran for re-election against the government as a Prohibitionist candidate. The Ontario Liberal Party, led by W.E.N. Sinclair, maintained its 14 seats, while the Progressives won 10. Four Liberal-Progressive candidates were also elected, along with several independents. Oke was the only UFO MPP who was re-elected as such, and he was joined by Thomas Farquhar from Manitoulin  and Farquhar Oliver from Grey South. The latter won with the assistance of federal MP Agnes MacPhail. Karl Homuth of Waterloo South was the only Labour MPP returned. Results. ! | Political party ! | Party leader ! | MPPs ! | Votes ! Candidates !1923 !1926 !# ! ± (pp)