(W.G.) Brown of Red Deer: a daughter remembers: the Presbyterian minister who launched the United Reform Movement in Saskatchewan.

During the 1930s, W. G. Brown was as well-known in Canada as Preston Manning is today. He, too, was the leader of a reform party. However, Brown's reform movement, with roots in the old CCF party, the Trades and Labour Congress, and the Social Credit party, had a different agenda from Manning's right-wing party in today's Canada.

Brown of Red Deer, as he was known across the country, was a brilliant orator and preacher, and a passionate defender of the rights of the poor.

He was also my father.

Last summer, I visited the beautiful cemetery behind the old Presbyterian church in Athelstan, Quebec, where both my parents and sister are buried. My father was raised on a farm near the town and my mother, Martha, was the daughter of Andrew Rowat, Presbyterian minister then of Athelstan. Both attended school at the Huntingdon Academy from which Dad went on to McGill University in Montreal. He chose the ministry over law because of his deep Christian beliefs, but he was always keenly interested in social conditions.

As my husband, Frank, and I wandered around the town, memories from stories told long ago flooded in.

Dad was ordained in 1902. He served first as a missionary in the logging camps of Northern Ontario and in the mining camps of British Columbia. Then, he spent 17 years (1908 to 1925) as a minister in Red Deer, Alberta. After 1925, St. Andrew's, Saskatoon, called him to serve a small band of faithful followers of The Presbyterian Church in Canada who had voted against Union. They were the remnant from the three large Presbyterian churches of Knox, St. Thomas and Westminster who had voted for Union.

They first met for services in a dance hall. Later, they built a solid basement church on 20th Street where the congregation grew and flourished. A new building erected in 1953 still stands on 20th Street. In 1995, I attended the 70th anniversary of the congregation and was given a great welcome. The young people put on a wonderful play in which the children kept referring to W. G. Brown. That evening, a tired little boy came over to me and asked, "What does W.G. stand for?"

"Walter George," I replied.

Father always asked for the hardest post. As a young minister in the lumber camps in Northern Ontario, he walked 15 to 30 miles a day to preach every night of the week to hundreds of men. Even then, he worried about the wasteful administration of the great timber forests.

He volunteered for the toughest mining camp mission in New Denver, Sandon and Silverton in West Kootenay, British Columbia. For four years, he preached in bunkhouses all over the mountains.

Big churches in the East tried to woo him, but he felt needed in the West. He remained there for his whole ministry. At his memorial service in Saskatoon, John McKinnon, an elder of the church, told of being with Dad when he replied to a telegram from a large church in the United States offering him a salary nearly three times greater than he was receiving. He had been working at an unbelievable pace and had begun to suffer the piercing pains of arthritis.

"Although his loss to us, particularly at that time, would have been a severe blow to St. Andrew's Church, to our city and to the church in Canada," said McKinnon, "no one could have objected to him accepting what many might call the fruits of a great and arduous ministry. However, his reaction was typical. We went to the CPR Telegraph Office where he scribbled this reply: `Need in Western Canada too great. Sincere thanks, W. G. Brown."'

Dad used to talk about our path in this life using a story from an experience he had in British Columbia. One day, he made a long trek to a silver mine he had never visited. Darkness was falling, and he found the trail up the mountain more difficult to follow as it seemed to wander through the most treacherous parts of the mountain. "The man who laid out this trail," he thought to himself, "did not know what he was doing."

Eventually, he reached the mine and spent the night with the miners. In the morning, to reach home, he had to cross the valley and climb up the other side. On the top of the ridge, he looked back at the trail he had taken down the mountain from the mine. Then he realized, this trail was the only way to reach the mine.

He used this story to point out that no matter how difficult we feel life is at the time, or how certain we are there is no way through, we will realize in the end that God has a purpose and a path for us to follow.

During those troubled times prior to Union in 1925, my father was sent on a tour of the Maritimes, as well as a week in Montreal and a tour in Ontario. A few years ago, Howard MacDonald of Peterborough told me that when he heard W. G. Brown was coming to Peterborough to speak in St. Paul's Church, he ran to school to tell his classmates. They did not know why he was so excited! St. Paul's was the only Presbyterian church in Peterborough to remain Presbyterian.

My father told me about staying with John Penman in Paris, Ontario. Penman was a millionaire with a huge home. He financed much of the struggle against Union. Keith Clifford's book on Union tells of a heated meeting in Hamilton when Dr. Samuel Lyle of that city rushed at my father, shaking his fist and demanding, "Would you dare to resist the will of God?"

"No," answered Father. "But I would dare to resist your interpretation of it!"

When my father was elected Moderator in 1931, he travelled widely in Canada. He also visited Taiwan for the Diamond Jubilee of the mission there as well as travelling to Manchuria, Korea and Japan.

The '30s brought terrible times to the Prairies. Trainloads of unemployed men arrived. Some departed. Others stayed. As children, we called them "tramps." But they were fine young men in desperate situations. No work, no welfare, nothing. The sign on our house read Presbyterian Manse, so many came to our door. Mother enlisted their help in her large garden and then fed them on the back step. Sometimes, she would give them a meal ticket, which my dad had purchased, for the Salvation Army. My father went throughout the city helping the poor, often giving from his own pocket.

One time, the police chief placed a notice in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix saying all families had been looked after. The same evening, my dad and a friend picked up coal, wood and food to take to a destitute family. At midnight, they knocked on the door of the police chief. They told him they never wanted to see an announcement like that again. They slammed the outer door shut and left.

The Saskatoon coal merchant claimed my dad was his best customer. I do not know how my parents managed financially. In difficult times, instead of requesting an increase in his salary, my father often asked for a decrease.

In September 1938, my father joined a group of about 20 people from Saskatoon drawn from the CCF, the Social Credit and the Trades and Labour Congress who hoped to unite in support of various reforms. They called themselves the United Reform Movement, and Dad was chosen to be leader. The sitting member of Parliament, a Liberal, died and so a by-election was called. My father was asked to run. He agreed, but took sick with his old enemy, rheumatic fever -- his third or fourth bout of it. Before the vote, his doctor told him he should be all right. Indeed, he did campaign a little.

Dad ran against several candidates, winning with a 5,000-vote majority. He and Mother went to Ottawa where he was introduced to the House by Agnes Macphail. In 1921, she had become the first woman ever elected to the House of Commons. He would be the first and only elected member of the United Reform Movement.

Mackenzie King, the prime minister, was also a Presbyterian. He and my dad had frequent correspondence. As conditions in the West worsened, so did the tone of the letters. As soon as my father took his seat, King dissolved Parliament. The wife of an elder of the church in Saskatoon told my mother: "Mackenzie King dissolved Parliament because he was afraid of your husband!"

The shock was too much for my father, and he collapsed at my sister Rhoda's home in Ottawa. The prognosis was not good as his heart was damaged. Mother told people in Saskatoon he was dying, but they refused to believe it. They re-elected him with a larger majority.

Letters from all over Canada congratulated him on his election and sympathized with the ideals of the United Reform Movement. But, shortly after the election, he died. He was only 65 years old. I was 21 when Dad died and felt devastated.

Father came from humble beginnings and never considered himself above anyone. In 1926, he refused an honorary doctorate degree from The Presbyterian College in Montreal and, again, in 1930, from Knox College in Toronto. The only gown he ever wore was a beautiful heavy black silk one given to him by the women of St. Andrew's when he was elected Moderator.

On the day of his funeral, the Saskatoon Star Phoenix wrote: "... his memory will live in the heart of Saskatoon for many decades to come, and if that memory serves to bring to this city and this political constituency, some of his greathearted tolerance of human weaknesses and some of his splendid Christian spirit, his political career will have been as valuable to this community as his services at Ottawa would have been to Canada."