Edgar Nelson Rhodes, (January 5, 1877 – March 15, 1942), was a Canadian parliamentarian from Nova Scotia who served as Premier of Nova Scotia from 1925 to 1930.
Early life and career
He was first elected to the House of Commons of Canada in 1908 as a member of the Conservative Party. In January 1917, he became Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada when his predecessor, Albert Sévigny, was appointed to the Canadian Cabinet. Rhodes was retained in the position following the 1917 election that fall, becoming the third Speaker since James Cockburn to preside over more than one Parliament. In 1921, he was made a member of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada before retiring from politics to become president of the British-American Nickel Company, whose previous president had been James Hamet Dunn.
Premiership
The company failed in 1925, and he returned to provincial politics. Prior to the 1925 provincial election, he was asked to become leader of the Nova Scotia Conservative Party after the leader of the party, W. L. Hall, was assaulted on the waterfront. Rhodes took over the party and led it to victory in the 1925 election. The Conservatives defeated a Liberal government that had been in power for forty-three years but had been, in its last years, wracked by an economic downturn and severe labour unrest among miners in Cape Breton.
Rhodes ran on a Maritime Rights platform, promising to curtail federal influence and stop the exodus of people from the province. The Tories more than doubled their seats in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, winning forty out of forty-three seats. An important factor in their victory was the failure of the governing Liberals to resolve a long strike by the province's coal miners. When Cape Breton coal miner William Davis was killed by company police in a confrontation on June 11, voters looked to the Tories for solutions. Rhodes engineered a settlement of the dispute and appointed a royal commission. The new government later introduced pensions for teachers and allowances for widowed mothers.
