John Lymburn

John Farquhar Lymburn (September 25, 1880 In the interim, he had married fellow Scot Isabella Marguerite Clark on July 19, 1912. The couple had three daughters: Marguerite Dormer, Mary Doreen Farquhar, and Constance Clark.

Attorney-general

In 1925, attorney-general John Edward Brownlee succeeded Herbert Greenfield as the leader of the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA)'s provincial caucus and Premier of Alberta. Brownlee was the only lawyer in the UFA caucus, which was dominated by farmers. In appointing an attorney-general to replace himself, he looked outside his caucus and appointed Lymburn, in part because of his lack of affiliation with any provincial political party. By convention, all cabinet ministers, including attorneys-general, were expected to sit in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta. Accordingly, Lymburn ran in the 1926 provincial election in Edmonton as a UFA candidate. He finished first of eighteen candidates in Edmonton, and became one of Edmonton's five members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). He was re-elected in 1930.

As attorney-general, Lymburn was involved in many of the Brownlee government's most important initiatives. He was a major figure in securing the transfer of resource rights from the federal government to the Alberta government. As the Great Depression bred labour militancy, at Brownlee's request he prepared a list of known Communist leaders so that the government could take action to deport them.

When Alberta became the only province to support the Famous Five, appellants in the Persons case, Lymburn was responsible for the province's submission.

He was also involved in scandal: the former head of the Liquor Investigation Bureau made allegations against him after Lymburn eliminated the Bureau to save money, though the charges had little effect either in the legal system or in the public eye. During the John Brownlee sex scandal, in which Brownlee was sued for the seduction of a family friend, Lymburn became the focus of controversy after his department hired a private investigator to look into claims that a Liberal lawyer had offered a young woman money to "put Mr. Brownlee in such a position that Mrs. Brownlee could get a divorce". Taking the stand during the trial, Lymburn stated that the investigation had been initiated not to aid in the premier's defence, but because the alleged solicitation was a criminal offence. He noted further that Brownlee had insisted on refunding to the government the cost of the investigator.

After the scandal forced Brownlee's resignation as premier, Lymburn stayed on as attorney-general in the short-lived government of Premier Richard Gavin Reid. The conservative Reid government was losing popularity as a result of the Great Depression. Radical economic theories, most notably the version of social credit espoused by Calgary evangelist William Aberhart, were gaining currency among the public. The government's position was that Aberhart's proposals were beyond the legal authority of the provincial government, since they involved banking, which the Constitution of Canada makes a responsibility of the federal government. As attorney-general, Lymburn played a major role in defending this position. When the government brought social credit founder C. H. Douglas from the United Kingdom as an advisor, Lymburn provided him with a copy of one of Aberhart's speeches and asked him to critique it; Douglas concluded that Aberhart's proposals did not align with "Douglasite" social credit, and that many of them would not have the desired effect.

Later life

In the 1935 provincial election, the UFA was wiped out of the legislature by Aberhart's upstart Social Credit League. As historian Franklin Foster has noted, "it was an ironic footnote to the demise of the most politically successful farmers' group in history that the one UFA candidate who came closest to re-election was lawyer John Lymburn in the City of Edmonton." After defeat, Lymburn remained active in community life as an elder in Edmonton's First Presbyterian Church, chairman of the Advisory Board of the Students' Christian Movement, chairman of the board of directors of the Beulah Home for unmarried mothers, and president of the Edmonton Scottish Society. He was an aficionado of the work of fellow Ayrshire native Robbie Burns, whose poetry he could recite in Gaelic, and often spoke at Burns suppers. In 1942, Lymburn contested a by-election in Edmonton; he came in third of five candidates in the first round of counting. Elmer Roper of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation emerged victorious.

Elmer Roper

G. B. Giles

John Lymburn

W. Griffin

N. V. Buchanan