W.E.N. Sinclair
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William Edmund Newton Sinclair (1873-1947) was a Canadian politician.
In the 1917 federal election on conscription (see: Conscription Crisis of 1917), Sinclair ran on as part of the anti-conscription "Laurier Liberals" but was defeated.
He later ran and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario as a candidate of the Ontario Liberal Party. He ran for the leadership of the party in the 1922 leadership convention, but lost to Wellington Hay. Hay resigned following a disastrous election result, and Sinclair served as interim leader of the Ontario Liberal Party from 1923 to 1930. He was interim leader for that length of time (and through the elections of 1926 and 1929) because of the party's state of disorganization and inability to hold a proper leadership convention.
The Liberals remained at the 14 seats they had in 1926, and dropped to 13 seats in the 1929 election. Sinclair initially decided to run for the permanent leadership in 1930, but because of the party's failure to make gains during his tenure, he attracted little support, and withdrew before balloting began. He remained Leader of the Opposition until the 1934 election because the newly-elected leader, Mitchell Hepburn, did not have a seat in the provincial legislature.
In the 1945 federal election, Sinclair was elected to the Canadian House of Commons for the Liberal Party of Canada. He died in office in 1947.
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Preceded by: | Ontario Liberal leaders |
Succeeded by: |