Five things you might not know about John Thompson

Sir John Thompson was Canada’s 4th Prime Minister (1892-1894)

1) The only Prime Minister married in the United States. When he married Annie Affleck in 1870, they required an epsicopal dispensation because he was a Methodist while Annie was Roman Catholic. The Halifax Archbishop was visiting the Vatican, so it was necessary for the young couple to sail to Bangor, Maine, to get the Bishop’s permission. The ceremony took place there.

2) Successfully acts as Charles Tupper’s lawyer after the former premier was accused of corruption in the 1873 election. Both men end up being Prime Minister of Canada and Premier of Nova Scotia.

3) Serves as the first dean of the University of Ottawa’s Law School in 1887 — 66 years before the school was actually launched.

4) Spends a quarter of his term of office in France negotiating seal hunting rights in the Bering Sea. Although he was part of a British delegation rather than participating as a Canadian, it was successful in winning terms from the United States.

5) Dies of a heart attack while having lunch with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle in 1894. Minutes after being inducted into the Imperial Privy Council, he fainted twice, the second attack proving fatal.

from Unknown and Unforgettable: A Guide to Canada’s Prime Ministers

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Who was the first PM with a university degree?

Graduating from  the University of McGill College in 1854 as a Bachelor of Civil Law, John Abbott later became the first Canadian Prime Minister with a university degree. He was typical of most of the country’s leaders who earned law degrees – 10 Prime Ministers in all.

Five PMs did not have a university degree (Macdonald, Mackenzie, Thompson, Bowell and Borden), while Mackenzie King had five.

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MPs to the end

Five Prime Ministers died while sitting as Members of Parliament. Two of them were still Prime Minister at the time: Sir John A. Macdonald in 1891 and Sir John Thompson in 1894. The second PM, Alexander Mackenzie died in 1892 while serving as MP for York East. Sir Wilfrid Laurier was Leader of the Opposition when he died in 1919. John Diefenbaker died on the job, doing constituency work in his Ottawa study in 1979.

In all, 317 Members of the House of Commons have died in office since 1867. The first one, in 1868, was Thomas D’Arcy McGee — Canada’s first political assassination. The most recent was Jack Layton, Leader of the Opposition, on August 22.

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How many PMs hung on Parliament Hill?

Twenty Prime Ministers in all have had their official portraits hung in the Centre Block. Only the two most recent — Paul Martin and Stephen Harper — await their turns.

There is no set schedule for determining when a Prime Minister will have his or her portrait painted and added to the collection. Two PMs — Sir John A. Macdonald and William Lyon Mackenzie King — had their portraits done while still in office. Two others — Sir John Abbott and Sir Mackenzie Bowell — waited more than 100 years for their canvases to be done. Both were unveiled in 2002.

Only two artists have more than one portrait in the collection. John Wycliffe Lowes Forster painted Alexander Mackenzie and Sir John Thompson, while Kenneth Keith Forbes painted Sir Robert Borden and R.B. Bennett.

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HMS Blenheim does double duty

When Prime Minister Sir John Thompson died suddenly of a heart attack at the luncheon table of Queen Victoria in 1894, the High Commissioner to Britain, Sir Charles Tupper, made arrangements for his body to be sent back to Canada on the HMS Blenheim British armoured ship that was painted black for the occasion.

Twenty-one years later, the Blenheim was pressed into similar duty again, to return the body of former Prime Minister Sir Charles Tupper who had retired to England. Arrangements to return Tupper were made by High Commissioner Sir George Perley (who died in Canada, 11 years after the Blenheim was scrapped).

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Catholics predominant in past 30 years

Five of the seven Prime Ministers still living are Roman Catholics. Although, historically, most Catholic leaders tended to be French Canadians, that profile began to disappear by the late 1970s. Of the five living Catholic PMs — Joe Clark, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin — only one is French Canadian.

For the record, we have had 9 Roman Catholics (the others are Thompson, Laurier, St. Laurent, Trudeau), 4 Anglicans (Abbott, Tupper, Borden, Campbell), 3 Presbyterians (Macdonald, Meighen, King), 3 Methodists/Uniteds (Bowell, Bennett, Pearson), 2 Baptists (Mackenzie, Diefenbaker), and 1 Christian & Missionary Alliance (Harper) in the Prime Minister’s office.

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Job preparation is the law

Interested in being the Canadian Prime Minister? Consider becoming a lawyer. That’s the exactly the kind of job training two-thirds of the country’s leaders had prior to their shift into politics. Prime Ministers called to the bar were Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir John Abbott, Sir John Thompson, Sir WIlfrid Laurier, Sir Robert Borden, Arthur Meighen, R.B. Bennett, Louis St. Laurent, John Diefenbaker, Pierre Trudeau, John Turner, Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell, Jean Chretien, and Paul Martin.

All five Prime Ministers named John were lawyers.

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