Duff Pattullo's career and premiership: research notes

12 October 2026. The working file behind Duff Pattullo, 22nd Premier of British Columbia: what did he get right, and what did he get wrong?, written when the thread on Bloody Sunday was widened into a retrospective of his career. Three research briefs were gathered (Lands and opposition, 1916-33; the works, parks and the north; Ottawa, the fall and the historians), and their findings are kept here with how each source was seen. The earlier notes on 1938 are in Pattullo_Bloody_Sunday_1938.md.

How seen: [O] read in the original (full text, page image or newspaper OCR); [S] a search snippet or a summary only (to be checked before quoting at length). Fisher (1991), Ormsby (1958) and Murton (2007) are lending-restricted on the Internet Archive; their passages below are from the archive's full-text search, which returns the printed words but no page images: [S], verbatim.

Lands, 1916-1928

• The Land Settlement Board was in the Department of Agriculture (Koroscil, p. 66 [O]), but Pattullo conceived it: "Duff Pattullo, who had originally conceived of the idea of the Land Settlement Board" (Murton [S]); he "suggested the formation of a land settlement board to replace the agricultural credits commission," and later reminded its chairman, "with biting sarcasm," that "I insisted that the Board should be called a 'Land Settlement' Board" (Fisher [S]).
• Soldier settlement (Paul M. Koroscil, "Soldiers, Settlement and Development in British Columbia, 1915-1930," BC Studies 54, 1982, pp. 63-87, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/1127 [O]): Land Settlement and Development Act 1917; Soldiers' Land Act 1918; first settlement areas in the Bulkley and Nechako, 2 July 1918. Costs to 1920 (Table 3, p. 80, from the Sessional Papers): Merville $69,699.91 purchase and $437,221.89 development for 13,660 acres; Camp Lister $187,431.46 and $286,195.81 for 5,936 acres. Merville fire, 5 July 1922, "destroyed fifty houses and the majority of the farm buildings" (p. 81); "one half of the Merville lands were worthless for cultivation"; many settlers gone by 1929 (p. 82). Camp Lister's $50,000 irrigation system, finished in 1929, "had arrived too late, as only twenty-one soldier settlers remained" (p. 85). Koroscil's verdict: the board's "careless decisions contributed to the decline" (p. 87); he does not name Pattullo.
• Fisher on the settlements [S]: "In many cases these conclusions are valid and Pattullo, along with Oliver, must bear much of the responsibility. But in some places he had more success."
• Pattullo at the time [O]: British Columbia "a long way in the lead in legislation upon land settlement," with "the most progressive land legislation in the world" (Prince Rupert Daily News, 3 Dec 1918, p. 3).
• South Okanagan Lands Project: about 22,000 acres bought from Senator Shatford's company for $350,000 (Brian Wilson, Archivos, 2014 [S]); begun 1919, canal to the border 1927, run by the province until 1964 (Town of Oliver [S]). Ormsby [S]: Oliver's project, "costing over $2,500,000"; Pattullo in 1945: "$3,500,000" (Daily News, 18 Oct 1945 [O]). Fisher [S]: Pattullo "was particularly proud of the work he did to assist settlement in the southern Okanagan." Murton [S]: the diversion dam "known as the Pattullo Dam"; the opposition said residents "were more likely to say 'damn Pattullo!'"; he proposed a brass plaque "so that everyone would know who was responsible." No source found on the Osoyoos (Inkameep) people and the project.
• The irrigation districts: Fisher [S], "a successful if relatively straightforward policy" (whether of the district rescue, the South Okanagan project or both is not clear from the snippets); the companies "kicked and complained when the irrigation works were taken over at prices that were too low." Victoria Daily Times, 1 Dec 1925 [O]: told farmers could not pay $15 to $30 an acre for water, "Mr. Pattullo replied that they had better get off their farms if that was true."
• Sumas Lake: in 1917 Pattullo "suggested to E.D. Barrow, Minister of Agriculture, that the LSB could take over as Sumas Dyking Commissioners" (Murton [S]). The board's 1919 report: "30,000 acres of magnificent land at a cost of $4,250,000" (Daily News, 20 Mar 1919 [O]). About $3.36 million spent by the end of 1924 [O, OCR split, ?], with contractor's claims unsettled (Abbotsford, Sumas and Matsqui News, c. 1925); the Attorney General in 1928: the estimates "had proved badly out" (VDT, 7 Mar 1928 [O]). Pattullo in 1929: Sumas "had been well worth reclaiming," but no relief for owners "to make a profit that they had done nothing to create" (VDT, 8 Mar 1929 [O]). Later, of "10,000 acres reclaimed at Sumas, only 1,063 acres had been sold" (Murton [S]); a review of Chad Reimer's Before We Lost the Lake gives 33,000 acres of new farmland [S]; the figures measure different things. The Sumas First Nation: the draining "brought profound and lasting harm" (sumasfirstnation.com [S]). Nothing found ties Pattullo to decisions about the Semá:th.
• Forests: Fisher [S], rangers "appointed on the basis of expertise rather than political affiliation. Firefighting technology was improved"; "expertise was easier to develop that it was to apply"; chapter epigraph "You cannot have a tree and cut it at the same time." Gray (1989) in Stephen Gray, "The Government's Timber Business: Forest Policy and Administration in British Columbia, 1912-1928," BC Studies 81 (Spring 1989).
• The north: Daily News, 3 Dec 1918 [O], "we took the opportunity to present British Columbia's claim for the return of the railway belt and the Peace River block... The federal authorities did not appear in a receptive mood." Returned by the agreement of 20 Feb 1930, signed for BC by Tolmie and F. P. Burden [S]. Estonians: Oliver, Pattullo and Pitka met 8 Nov 1923 (Daily News [O]); the group reached Fort St. James 3 April 1924, and "by 1932 all the members of the group had moved elsewhere or returned to Estonia" [S].
• Verdict: Neil Sutherland, review of Fisher, BC Studies 94 (1992), p. 93 [O]: "We see Pattullo as an extremely able Minister of Lands." https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/bcstudies/article/view/185814

Opposition, 1928-1933

• Held Prince Rupert in 1928, "Pattullo 1354, Thompson 1268" with three polls out (Daily News, 25 July 1928 [O]); permanent leader at the Kamloops convention, 31 May 1930 (Daily News, 2 June 1930 [O]). Sutherland [O]: Fisher "carefully recreates Pattullo's masterly effort at rebuilding his party."
• Refused union government, September 1932 and March 1933 (Abbott 1994, p. 33; Daily News, 14 Sep 1932 [O]).
• Kidd Report: "advocated ruthless cutting of government services and programs" (Fisher [S]); the cabinet refused it to him (Ormsby [S]); his statement of 15 Sep 1932, "Instead of indulging in all the present blithering kite-flying and cheap intrigue..." (Ormsby [S]).
• Platform (adopted Oct 1932; printed Daily News, 10 Oct 1933, p. 4 [O], https://prnewspaperarchives.ca/islandora/object/prdn%3A53205): employment first; an Economic Council, national unemployment insurance, "a measure of State Health Insurance," a public utilities commission, a central bank. "Work and wages. Work at the prevailing rate of wages. It can be done and it will be" (Daily News, 7 Oct 1933 [O]). Fisher [S]: "progressive enough to appeal to radicals and stable enough to appeal to conservatives."
• 1933 result: Liberals 34 of 47 seats (Canadian Elections Database [S]; vote share 43.09% there, "nearly 42 per cent" in Fisher); Tolmie lost in Saanich; Ormsby [S], "The Conservative party was annihilated."

The premiership: money, works, parks, the north

• "We are not mendicants" and "We have the wealth and resources to make good any borrowing we may do in these times" (Daily News, 24 Jan 1934, p. 1, CP [O, OCR garbled]). Ottawa refused to have the CNR take the PGE (Daily News, 19 Jan 1934 [O]); refused to finance his works (Daily News, 7 Jun 1935 [O]); the national loan council he objected to (Daily News, 14 Feb 1936 [S]).
• Pearson at the conference of December 1935: "Pattullo policy that every able man should be given remunerative work"; about $5 million a year would employ nearly all (Daily News, 14 Dec 1935 [O]).
• Fisher via Sutherland [O]: "Pattullo believed in an interventionist state and his government would be arguably the most active in Canada during the 1930s" (p. 248); after 1937 "much of the reformist heat had gone out" (p. 299); King's diary, "the most absurd ideas about the extent to which public monies should be spent at this time" (p. 286); p. ix, of McBride, Oliver, Pattullo and W. A. C. Bennett, "Pattullo was the most significant." Sutherland: Fisher "makes no case for this evaluation"; citing Bill Asselstine, "Bennett must take first place and a Pattullo a respectable second."
• Pattullo Bridge: contract to the Dominion Bridge Company, which "had undertaken to dispose of two million dollars worth of bonds" (Daily News, 18 Jun 1935 [O]); radio address of 23 Apr 1937 (Daily News, 3 May 1937, p. 4 [O]): "$4,000,000 was voted," the Act "laid down that tolls must be collected," and with half from Ottawa "the bridge will be a free bridge"; opened 15 Nov 1937, "some 7800 feet," "approximately $4,000,000" (Daily News, 15 Nov 1937 [O]); New Westminster's movement against the tolls (Daily News, 9 Sep 1937 [O]); tolls lifted 12 Feb 1952 (Daily News [O]); toll 25 cents and "Pay-toll-a" [S]; his 1945 card, "Built Pattullo Bridge at New Westminster in face of heavy opposition for which many have since apologized" (Daily News, 27 Sep 1945 [O]). Conflicts: contract June or October 1935; length 7,800 or 6,200 feet.
• Roads: federal Interdepartmental Committee, five years to 31 Mar 1938: Ottawa $3,815,000 on BC roads, the province $15,500,000 (Grant, ch. II n. 55 [O]). Maitland: "There's a parallel between Julius Caesar and Pattullo, but Julius Caesar had a good road policy" (Province, 18 May 1937, in Grant [O]). Big Bend Highway: agreed 1929, paid by Ottawa from 1933, opened by Pattullo 29 June 1940, "positively the loneliest road in North America" (Ben Bradley, "'A Questionable Basis for Establishing a Major Park'," in A Century of Parks Canada, 1911-2011, 2011 [O]).
• The camps (Richard A. Rajala, "A Political Football: Federal-Provincial Cooperation in British Columbia Forests, 1930-1995," Forest History Today, 2003, pp. 29-40 [O], https://foresthistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PoliticalFootball.pdf): Young Men's Forestry Training Plan 1935, about 500 men, $1.75 a day less 75 cents board, 382 miles of trail, "a master-stroke of public policy" (p. 30); Forest Development Projects from winter 1936-37, 30 cents an hour, crews developing Capilano, Little Qualicum Falls, Englishman River, Skutz Falls, Harrison Lake, John Dean and Thetis Lake parks (pp. 31-32); "the 3,800" men in 1936-37 and "roughly 5,000" in 1937-38, against the Forest Branch's 2,809 and 4,005; "3,100 young men received forestry training" over five years; camps closed September 1939 (p. 33).
• Parks (BC Geographical Names records [S]): Mount Seymour, OIC 119, 31 Jan 1936; Tweedsmuir, OIC 715, 21 May 1938 (the same record also says the reserve "was established in 1936"); Wells Gray, OIC 1644, 28 Nov 1939; Manning, 17 Jun 1941; Hamber, OIC 1305, 16 Sep 1941, about 2.4 million acres. The Pattullo Range named 1 Mar 1938, "commemorating the Governor General's visit to Tweedsmuir Park, August 1937, upon Mr. Pattullo's invitation." Bradley [O] on Hamber: "Abruptly and with little consultation, Pattullo issued an Order-in-Council"; "The creation of provincial parks remained a cavalier process"; cut to 55,600 acres in 1961. Tweedsmuir lost about 1,000 of 5,350 square miles to the Alcan project (Lady Tweedsmuir [S]). Garibaldi (1927) and Cathedral Grove (1944-47) were not his.
• The north (Daniel John Grant, "T. D. Pattullo's Northern Empire," MA thesis, University of Victoria, 1980, https://hdl.handle.net/1828/17951 [O, full text]): the annexation plan "gargantuan" (p. 4); cabinet 4 Mar 1937, Crerar's offer of $125,000 a year (p. 10); announced 26 Apr 1937; Yukoners "sold as chattel slaves" (p. 12); Yukon Consolidated's lobbying; separate schools; "in abeyance" 5 Oct 1937; King's diary 3 May 1938, "Pattullo like a fool, has been telling the Americans what to do to get underway with public works in Canada" (p. 30); the committee: the road "would not be justified" (p. 40); King's diary 31 May 1940, "Believes in spending millions instead of thousands because the people do not know the difference" (pp. 46-47); conclusions: "In the midst of the depression he refused to allow British Columbia to be depressed" (p. 58), "Later premiers, in times of prosperity, built where he laid the plans," "A man of politics, he would have made a better king" (p. 59). Pattullo's 1945 card: the Yukon talks "suspended at my request" [O]. Bennett and the Yukon, 1968: Yukon Council Votes and Proceedings, 27 Nov 1968 [S].

Ottawa and the fall, 1938-1941

• Rowell-Sirois: recommendations (James A. Maxwell, NBER, 1948, pp. 4-6 [O]): Ottawa to take provincial debts and relief of employables; provinces to give up personal income tax, corporation taxes and succession duties; no adjustment grants for Ontario, Alberta or British Columbia.
• Pattullo to the legislature, 7 Nov 1940 (Journals, 1940, pp. 21-22 [O], https://archives.leg.bc.ca/civix/document/id/leg_archives/legarchives/307937400): "not prepared to accept the recommendations of this report in toto"; "Undue centralization of any kind would be harmful."
• His printed statement, 14 Jan 1941 (https://archive.org/details/31761119710044 [O]): "immediate and ever increasing centralization of authority in the Dominion"; BC "does not want to be pushed down either to the bottom or half way, there to turn the treadmill of mediocrity in perpetuity"; "this is no time to make so radical a change." The conference sat 14-15 January.
• George M. Abbott, "Pattullo, the Press, and the Dominion-Provincial Conference of 1941," BC Studies 111 (1996), pp. 37-59 [O]: King's diary 15 Jan 1941, "They all think Pattullo particularly stupid, having had his speech printed before leaving BC," and "a tremendous achievement"; Sun and Province, "chief of the wrecking crew"; the cabinet backed him (Hart wrote the critique; Weir: social services set back "25 years"); Ilsley's figures, BC's net loss $3,611,000; the historians (Ormsby, "rejected for his parochialism"; Robin, "a petty obstructionist"; Fisher, "absolutely correct" on undue centralization).
• 1941 election (Canadian Elections Database; Abbott 1994 [O]): Liberals 21 seats, 32.94%; CCF 14, 33.36%; Conservatives 12, 30.91%; Labour 1. Prince Rupert: Pattullo 1,681, Weaver (CCF) 1,563. Convention 2 Dec 1941; resignation effective 9 Dec (Abbott 1994).
• 1945: Prince Rupert, Brett (CCF) 1,873, Pattullo (Independent) 1,348, Mickleburgh 538; Daily News, 26 Oct 1945 [O]: "It is in the nature of Duff Pattullo that he should go down fighting"; Hart: "the honored dean" of the Legislature.
• Death: Daily News, 31 Mar 1956 [S], "died Thursday after a brief illness," which is 29 March; the person page has 30 March (Find a Grave, Wikipedia, the Canadian Encyclopedia). To check.
• No Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry yet for Pattullo (the link from other entries is marked not yet published).

Not reached

Ormsby's 1962 article on the Little New Deal; Fisher's and Ormsby's books beyond search snippets; the BC Sessional Papers (UBC Open Collections refused automated access); British Columbia's 1938 submission (lending only); Reimer's Before We Lost the Lake; Barman's The West Beyond the West.