Stanley Knowles

Who was Stanley Knowles?

Stanley Howard Knowles, PC, OC was a Canadian parliamentarian. Knowles represented the riding of Winnipeg North Centre from 1942 to 1958 on behalf of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and again from 1962 to 1984 representing the CCF's successor, the New Democratic Party.

Knowles was widely regarded and respected as the foremost expert on parliamentary procedure in Canada, and served as the CCF and NDP House Leader for decades. He was also a leading advocate of social justice, and was largely responsible for persuading the governments to increase Old Age Security benefits and for the introduction of the Canada Pension Plan, as well as other features of the welfare state.

Knowles was born in Los Angeles, California. His father was a machinist from Nova Scotia and his mother was the daughter of a domestic servant from New Brunswick. The couple married and emigrated to the United States in 1904, four years before Stanley's birth. He visited relatives on the Canadian Prairie when he was 16 and decided to stay and enrolled at Brandon College in 1927. Knowles was brought up as a fundamentalist Methodist but was won over to the social gospel movement, and became a United Church minister after meeting J.S. Woodsworth at the annual conference of the Student Christian Movement of Canada, a fledgling ecumenical social justice movement founded in 1921. Knowles was ordained in 1933 after graduating from theological college.