John Queen

John Queen (February 11, 1882 – July 15, 1946) was a Manitoba politician, and the second parliamentary leader of that province's Independent Labour Party. He also served as the 33rd Mayor of Winnipeg on two occasions.

Queen was born at Lanarkshire, Scotland in 1882, the son of John Queen and Jane Todd, both natives of Scotland. A cooper by trade, he arrived in Canada in 1906 with his younger brother William, moving into a rooming house at 259 Dorothy St., a stone's throw from the massive Canadian Pacific Railway yards where many working-class Scottish and English immigrants were then employed. He operated a horse-drawn delivery wagon for a laundry. On June 25, 1908, Queen married Katherine Ross, who had herself emigrated from Scotland in 1907.

By 1911 the family, which by then included a son John and a daughter Gloria (later Gloria Queen-Hughes, a prominent feminist and mayoral candidate), were living in the working-class neighbourhood of Weston.

Queen soon became involved in the radical politics of Winnipeg. He joined the Social Democratic Party of Canada in 1908, as the group was breaking away from the more doctrinaire Socialist Party of Canada. Queen's own variety of socialism was undogmatic, and was strongly influenced by the reform liberalism of John Stuart Mill.

Queen was elected to the Winnipeg City Council in 1916, and continued to serve on this body until 1919. In this capacity, he argued for a more progressive tax system, and defended the rights of returning soldiers. He had intended to run for federal office in 1917, but stood aside in the interest of labour unity.

Queen was a leading figure in the Winnipeg General Strike, and received a one-year jail sentence for "seditious conspiracy" in 1920. This did not hurt his popularity among the city's workers, and he was elected to the Manitoba legislature later in the year in the ten-member district of Winnipeg. After taking his seat in 1921, he supported a motion to allow "peaceful picketing" within the province; this motion was defeated.

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