John Farthing

John Colborne Farthing (1897-1954) was a Canadian soldier, thinker, philosopher, economist, teacher, and author of the seminal tract Freedom Wears a Crown, published posthumously. It rather quickly became an epistle of Red Toryism.

Farthing was born in on March 18, 1897 to John Farthing and Mary (née Kemp) Farthing. His father was an Anglican priest who rose in the church hierarchy in Ontario, becoming Dean of the Diocese in 1907. In 1909 he was called to Montreal as bishop of the Anglican Diocese, where he served until 1939. His aunt Ann Cragg Farthing served as an Anglican missionary in the United States territory of Alaska, in the Interior. She served in Fairbanks and then in smaller Alaska Native villages.

The youngest of two sons, Farthing attended Lower Canada College, and McGill University. After his second year at McGill in 1915, he enlisted with, and went overseas as a Gunner in the McGill Battery, Canadian Field Artillery. He served the balance of the Great War in France with his battery.

After the Armistice, Farthing resumed his studies at McGill, graduated with Honours and matriculated to Oxford. He entered the New College to begin Graduate studies. In 1924 he finished with a degree in Modern Greats. For five years after his return to Canada from England, he was a lecturer in Political Science & Economics at McGill; he was considered one of the brilliant young thinkers recruited and nurtured by Stephen Leacock. Farthing was an early sceptic regarding Keynesianism. As a result of the reaction to this then-apostasy, he became disillusioned with academe and so felt compelled to resign his position in 1929.

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