Charles Stuart

Charles Allan Stuart (August 3, 1864 – March 5, 1926) was a Canadian politician and jurist in the province of Alberta. Born in Canada West and educated in the same area after it became Ontario, he came west in 1897 and set up a law practice in Calgary. After a failed election bid to the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories, he was elected to the Calgary City Council and then to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. He resigned before the end of his term in the latter body to accept a judgeship on the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories. He was later appointed to the new Supreme Court of Alberta. He was also the first Chancellor of the University of Alberta, serving in that capacity from 1908 until his death in 1926.

Early life

Stuart was born in Caradoc, Canada West on August 13, 1894. He attended Middlesex County College and then the University of Toronto, graduating from the latter in 1891 with a gold medal in classics; he subsequently lectured there in constitutional history. He graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1894 with a Bachelor of Laws, and was admitted to the Law Society of Upper Canada in 1896. He was less sanguine about Alberta's new electoral boundaries, which disproportionately favoured the province's north, and about the Liberals' policy of fixing Calgary's rival Edmonton as the interim provincial capital, with the first legislature to make the final decision—he felt that the issue should be put to a vote in the first provincial election. He lost both of these fights, and once again loyally adhered to his party's program.

When Alberta became a province, Stuart became secretary of the Alberta Liberal Association, and he played a significant role in the Liberal campaign in the 1905 provincial election. As MLA, Stuart advocated for Calgary's selection as permanent capital (among other arguments, he pointed out Calgary's proximity to the beautiful Rocky Mountains).

Stuart's time in the legislature came to a close after less than a year, when in October 1906 he resigned to take up a judgeship on the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories; when Alberta created its own court the following year, he became one of its first judges.

In 1921, Stuart was elevated to the Supreme Court's newly created Appellate Division. While sitting on this court, he upheld a trial decision convicting a prostitute, who appealed on the basis that the magistrate who convicted her, Alice Jamieson, was, by virtue of being a woman, not legally a person and therefore ineligible to serve as magistrate. This decision was a prelude to the famous Persons Case, which found that Canadian women were indeed persons.

Stuart became the first Chancellor of the University of Alberta in 1908, and served until his death; the university awarded him an honorary doctorate of laws in 1915. Charles Stuart died March 5, 1926.

R. B. Bennett

Charles Allan Stuart