Arthur Puttee

Who was Arthur Puttee?

Arthur W. Puttee was the first Labour Member of Parliament in the Canadian House of Commons.

Puttee was a printer by training. Born in England, he immigrated to North America in 1888. He settled in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1891. He helped found the local trade union council, the Winnipeg Labour Party and a left-wing newspaper called The Voice, which he edited from 1899 until 1918. He was also a founding member of Winnipeg's first English-language Unitarian Church.

When Winnipeg's Liberal MP, R. W. Jamieson, died in February 1899, Puttee called for the nomination of a Labour candidate to contest the vacant seat in a by-election. The trade union council agreed, and with resources promised from local unions, nominated Puttee as its candidate against Liberal E. D. Martin.

Puttee's chances for election benefitted from a serious division in the local Liberal ranks. Martin had been nominated by a minority faction in the party rebelling against Clifford Sifton, a powerful member of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier's Cabinet and the leading Liberal spokesman in the western provinces. Many Sifton loyalists unofficially supported Puttee against Martin.