Tom Uphill
| Tom Uphill | |
|---|---|
| MLA for Fernie | |
|
In office 1920–1960 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
June 26, 1874 Chewton Mendip, Somerset, England |
| Died | February 17, 1962 (aged 87) Fernie, British Columbia |
| Political party | Labour Party of Canada |
Thomas Hubert Uphill (June 26, 1874 – February 17, 1962) was a socialist politician in British Columbia, longtime mayor of the town of Fernie and also represented the riding named for the town in the British Columbia Legislative Assembly for forty years, most of them as the legislature's sole labour MLA.
Uphill was born in 1874 in Chewton Mendip, Somerset, England, the son of a farm labourer. After serving in the Second Boer War, he moved to Fernie, British Columbia in 1904 and became a life insurance salesman. A supporter of the trade union movement he also served as secretary of the miner's union. In 1912 he was elected to city council for the first time and won his first election as mayor in 1915.
In the 1916 provincial election, Uphill ran for the provincial legislature as a Conservative and was narrowly defeated. The wave of political radicalisation that followed World War I along with his trade union sympathies affected Uphill and when he ran for the legislature in 1920, he did so as a member of the Federated Labour Party which had been created by the province's federation of labour absorbing previous socialist parties. Uphill was elected as one of three FLP MLAs in the province.
In the legislature, Uphill was an opponent of prohibition clashing with Premier John Oliver on the question. In 1924 Uphill was re-elected as one of three Canadian Labour Party MLAs. The CLP fractured and, in 1928, Uphill was re-elected as the sole Independent Labour Party MLA and thereafter represented the local "Fernie and District Labour Party". The British Columbia Co-operative Commonwealth Federation contested its first election in 1933. Uphill declined to join the CCF, viewing it as too conservative. His views had evolved towards those of the Communist Party of Canada though he never joined that party nor ran under its label.
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