Edgar Nelson Rhodes

Who was Edgar Nelson Rhodes?

Edgar Nelson Rhodes, PC was a Canadian parliamentarian from Nova Scotia.

He was first elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1908 as a member of the Conservative Party. In January 1917, he became Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons when his predecessor, Albert Sévigny, was appointed to the Canadian Cabinet. Rhodes was highly regarded as Speaker and retained the position following the 1917 election that fall, becoming the first Speaker since James Cockburn to preside over more than one Parliament. In 1921, he was made a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada before retiring from politics to become president of the British-American Nickel Company.

The company failed in 1925, and he returned to provincial politics. Prior to the 1925 provincial election, he was asked to become leader of the Nova Scotia Conservative Party after the leader of the party, W. L. Hall, was assaulted on the waterfront. Rhodes took over the party, and led it to victory in the 1925 election. The Conservatives defeated a Liberal government that had been in power for forty-three years but had been, in its last years, wracked by an economic downturn and severe labour unrest among miners in Cape Breton.