Joseph Tweed Shaw (August 30, 1883 – July 12, 1944) was a

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politician. He served in the

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from 1921 to 1925 as an independent Labour Member of Parliament (MP), and later became an MLA and leader of the Alberta Liberal Party.

Early life

Shaw was born at

Port Arthur, Ontario Port Arthur was a city in Northern Ontario, Canada, located on Lake Superior. In January 1970, it was amalgamated with Fort William and the townships of Neebing and McIntyre to form the city of Thunder Bay. Port Arthur became the district seat ...

(later

Thunder Bay Thunder Bay is a city in and the seat of Thunder Bay District, Ontario, Canada. It is the most populous municipality in Northwestern Ontario and the second most populous (after Greater Sudbury) municipality in Northern Ontario. Its population i ...

), and received his early education in

Calgary Calgary () is a major city in the Canadian province of Alberta. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806 making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in C ...

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. He later received a

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degree from the

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, and returned to Alberta to work as a barrister. He served in the

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during

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from 1916 to 1918. In religion, he was a

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Political career

He was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in the 1921 federal election, defeating future

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Richard Bennett by twelve votes in

Calgary West Calgary West was a federal electoral district in Alberta, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1917 to 1953, and from 1979 to 2015. It was in the western part of the City of Calgary. The electoral district was or ...

. Shaw is usually considered to have been a Labour candidate but he actually ran as an independent, supported by both the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) and the Alberta branch of the Dominion Labor Party (DLP). He attended a Progressive Party convention in 1922 and may have been a candidate for that party's leadership. But he stated his independence from all parties in 1923. During his time in parliament, Shaw was associated with the

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of radical Labour and Progressive representatives. Shaw sought re-election in

1925 Events January * January 1 – The Syrian Federation is officially dissolved, the State of Aleppo and the State of Damascus having been replaced by the State of Syria (1925–1930), State of Syria. * January 3 – Benito Mussolini m ...

as an independent candidate, and this time received unofficial support from the

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. He lost to Bennett in a rematch of 1921, and subsequently became affiliated with the Alberta Liberal Party. On April 21, 1926, he was chosen without opposition as leader of the provincial party. From his new position, he attacked Alberta's UFA ministry as the government of a class rather than of all the people. In the provincial election June 1926, Shaw led his party to a disappointing 7 seats out of 61. He was personally elected in Bow Valley. In those days, Alternative Voting was used to elect the MLAs in Alberta rural districts. In the first count, he came in second. In the second count, he picked up enough second choice votes from the eliminated Conservative candidate to pass the UFA candidate by one vote, amass a majority of the votes in the district and win the seat. He served as an opposition member for the next four years. Although leader of the Liberal party, he never served as

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in the legislature, after a Speaker's ruling divided the Official Opposition funding between all the opposition party leaders. In part due to the Single Transferable Voting system in use in Edmonton and Calgary, there were four opposition groups in the Alberta legislature.A Report on Alberta Elections (1982) He did not seek re-election in 1930. He attempted a return to the House of Commons in the 1935 federal election, but was unsuccessful in taking the

Calgary East Calgary East is a federal electoral district in Alberta, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1917 to 1953, 1979 to 1988, 1997 to 2015, and since 2025. It was a lower income urban riding in Calgary, with a sizabl ...

seat. He ran for the "Independent Movement" (an anti- Social Credit fusion of Liberals and Progressive Conservatives) in the 1940 provincial election in Calgary where

Single Transferable Voting The single transferable vote (STV) or proportional-ranked choice voting (P-RCV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which each voter casts a single vote in the form of a ranked ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vo ...

was in use. He came in sixth in the First Count (Calgary had five open seats in this election) and did not receive enough vote transfers to achieve the quota required to win a seat. He again failed to win a seat. He died four years later.

References

# Anthony Mardiros, ''William Irvine: The Life of a Prairie Radical'', (Toronto: J. Lorimer, 1979), p. 112. The Canadian parliamentary website lists him as a Labour MP, but this is an error. # William L. Morton, ''The Progressive Party in Canada'', (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950), p. 182. # Mardiros, p. 173. # Mardiros, p. 168.

External links

Legislative Assembly of Alberta Members Listing
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shaw, Joseph 1883 births 1944 deaths Leaders of the Alberta Liberal Party Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Alberta Independent MPs in the Canadian House of Commons Ginger Group MPs Alberta Liberal Party MLAs University of Michigan Law School alumni Politicians from Thunder Bay 20th-century members of the House of Commons of Canada 20th-century members of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta