Roy Brown (Manitoba politician)
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Francis Roy Brown (born September 13, 1896 in Stockton, Manitoba; died November 30, 1960) was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as a Liberal-Progressive from 1953 to 1958.
Brown was educated in Winnipeg. He enlisted in the Clyde Corps at the beginning of World War I, and served overseas in France, seeing action at Ypres, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele. Brown joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1917, and remained with this group until the end of the war. After the war, he worked for Western Canada Airways in Manitoba, and was superintendent and chief pilot of the company's airmail operations from 1930 to 1932. He helped to organize Central Northern Airways, a predecessor of TransAir Limited, in 1947, and served as its vice-president. He was also a member of the Winnipeg Flying Club, and an executive on the Wartime Pilots' & Observers Association.
Brown's piloting skills were undoubtedly useful to his political career, as he represented the northern constituency of Rupertsland in the Manitoba assembly. During the 1950s, many of Rupertsland's communities were remote and isolated, and could only be reached by plane. Brown himself was credited with bringing considerable development into the region.
He was elected to the Manitoba legislature in the 1953 provincial election, defeating fellow Liberal-Progressive H. Boulette, 1,136 votes to 982. In this period of Manitoba history, voting in Rupertsland was deferred for logistical reasons until after the rest of the province had voted. The Liberal-Progressives had already won a majority government, and no opposition parties contested the constituency.
Brown was resoundingly defeated when he ran for re-election in the 1958 campaign. The Progressive Conservatives under Dufferin Roblin had already won a minority government in the rest of the province, and there was little incentive for voters in this remote area to elect an opposition member. Brown lost to Progressive Conservative candidate Joseph Jeannotte, 2,342 votes to 511.
He was posthumously inducted to Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1975.
External Links:
- "The Origin and Growth of Western Canadian Aviation as I Have Seen It
by Roy Brown", 1957-58 [1]
