Numbers man

John Hart: A Businessman in British Columbia Politics
by Patricia E. Roy

Vancouver: UBC Press, 2025
$34.95  /  9780774872515

Reviewed by Ron Verzuh

*

If we did a quick survey, I doubt many readers would know the name John Hart unless they were familiar with Hart Highway (a.k.a. Highway 97 near Prince George) or the John Hart Dam at Campbell River. Now, veteran historian Patricia E. Roy has come to the rescue with a full biography of this “almost forgotten Liberal politician and businessman.”

He may be almost lost to history but he left an indelible mark on British Columbia as the author of 21 provincial budgets, for laying the groundwork for BC Hydro, and by keeping the Pacific Great Eastern Railway dream alive for decades. He was a numbers man who shepherded BC’s finances through two world wars and the Depression, playing an outsized historic role in shaping our province’s future.

Unravelling that role is a tall order. Thankfully Roy, with her superlative research skills and her sharp eye for detail, delivers a masterful look inside the life of a man who quietly went about making his mark on BC as finance minister (1917-1924 and 1933-1946) and eventually premier (1941-1947).

Hart is not Roy’s first biography, nor her first study of BC premiers. She also wrote about Richard McBride (1903-1915) in Boundless Optimism, and contributed profiles to the Canadian Encyclopedia on John Robson (1889-1992), John Bowser (1915-1916), Harlan Carey Brewster (1916-1918), Simon Tolmie (1928-1933), Byron Johnson (1947-1952), W.A.C. Bennett (1952-1972), and Bill Vander Zalm (1986-1991).

Roy documents Hart’s careful negotiations with Ottawa at federal-provincial conferences often to the province’s advantage. For example, during the Depression when unemployment was a major concern, Hart made arrangements with the federal government to take steps to address the problem. As one observer remarked, he quickly earned his reputation as a “hard trader,” one that “returns from Ottawa with a bargain.” But some will also remember Hart as a shrewd tax man.

Much to her credit, Roy has explored Hart’s handling of the BC economy with a deft hand, working through pages of stock and bond trading reports and budget figures to explain how he did it. It’s important documentation, but do not expect any juicy scandals. Roy hints at the odd suspicious claim of wrongdoing by the opposition Conservative party, but this life story is squeaky clean.

A dedicated spouse (he and Harriet had no children), avid golfer, and scrupulous poker player, one of the few challenges some opposition critics voiced had to do with his being Irish Catholic. “Hart ‘waxed indignant’ over the ‘propaganda, cheap politics and hitting under the belt’ that had been used . . . when it was said that he would limit government jobs to people of a certain religious persuasion.”

He was a Liberal party man throughout his career but was able to maneouvre policies through the coalition that was formed between BC Liberals and Conservatives during the Second World War and early post-war years. “Hart was a pragmatic politician and businessman, not a philosopher,” writes Roy.

He was adamantly opposed to the socialism advocated by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, yet he worked with the more progressive labour minister George Pearson during the Depression to achieve some workplace harmony. When he ran for office, he declared that he stood for anything that would make for “good, clean, honest and upright government.”

A businessman first, he was long a partner in a real estate and insurance firm. This gave him the experience to better understand the later complaints and demands of the oil and gas, mining and smelting, and other extractive industries. “Through his business career,” writes Roy, “team sports, and involvement in civic activities, he had acquired skills that he would need as finance minister.”

Social programs and immigrant relations were not his forte. “Hart’s attitude to minorities and their rights was cautious at best,” Roy writes. He went along with trends and shared public opinions such as Chinese exclusion and Japanese wartime internment, but shifted his views to accommodate changing times. “Being a follower was an effective political strategy.” 

He shared no opinion about the Doukhobors, the Russian religious sect that had split into fueding factions while he was in office, nor did he provide a solution to their difficulties. He had limited contact with BC’s indigenous people, although he donated to the Native Voice newspaper, seeing it as a way to inform readers of the problems facing First Nations. But, as Roy writes, his government “afforded no political rights to the first peoples of the province.”

She concludes that although Hart “did not provide exciting government” he did have an “unsung steady hand” on provincial finances and steadied the political ship during wartime and the Depression. His “unassailable dignity” was “leavened by Irish humour,” noted one newspaper. Others spoke of his “quiet decorum” and his “calm, soft-spoken presence.”

It takes a persistent historian dedicated to her subject to wade through the life of this finance minister and businessman. First, there are all the numbers to contend with. Budgets are a jigsaw puzzle to most of us. But here we have the guidance of someone who has clearly resurfaced from the financial weeds to render a portrait of one of BC’s little-remembered movers and shakers.

This tireless account is a must-read for business historians and students of BC politics. However, it is not easy reading for those who lack the patience to follow lengthy explanations of how a financial policy decision was made. And yet, for someone like me who struggles with his own income tax returns, I came away awed by Roy’s forensic examination of the financial wizardry and by her honest portrait of our 23^rd premier.

*

Ron Verzuh is a writer and historian. [Editor’s note: Ron Verzuh recently wrote about Tom McGauley and has reviewed recent books by Lisa Anne Smith, Charles Demers, Graeme Menzies, Angie Ellis, Mark Waddell, and R. Bruce Macdonald for The British Columbia Review.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster