Hanson Taylor Dowell

Hanson Taylor Dowell, QC (September 14, 1906 – September 23, 2000) was a Canadian educator, lawyer, judge and politician. He represented the electoral district of Annapolis East in the Nova Scotia House of Assembly from 1960 to 1963. He was a member of the Progressive Conservatives.^[1] He was closely associated with minor hockey throughout most of his life, and spent one term as president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association.

Born in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia,^[2] the son of the late George Harris Dowell and Elizabeth Gertrude (Donaldson) Dowell, he received his early education at Elmsdale Public School and completed his high school education at the Halifax Academy. He received a teaching diploma from the Normal College in Truro in 1924 and taught school for several years. After spending a summer as a lay preacher in Alberta, he returned to school and received his law degree from Dalhousie University in 1930. He was admitted to the Bar on June 13, 1930. He moved to Middleton and set up a law practice in 1931 which he ran for 29 years. During that period he held several offices: Stipendiary Magistrate for the Town of Middleton, Stipendiary Magistrate for Annapolis County and Registrar of Probate for Annapolis County.

A member of the Progressive Conservative party, on June 7, 1960 he was elected as a Member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly for the District of Annapolis East. He was appointed Judge of the County Court of District Number Three in the Province of Nova Scotia in 1963, Judge of the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes of the Province of Nova Scotia in 1966, Local Judge of the Trial Division of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia in 1968 and served in those capacities until his retirement in 1981. He was also one of the founding members of the Western Counties Bar Association. He was involved in hockey for over 50 years at various levels - "Hanson Dowell made a major contribution to the development of hockey in Nova Scotia and throughout Canada. In 1935 he was an administrator with the Central Valley Hockey League and from there he moved up the executive ladder. He served four years as president of the Maritime Amateur Hockey Association and as vice-president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association for five years, becoming president from 1945 to 1947. For 12 years (1956-68) he was secretary-treasurer of the MAHA and served as treasurer from 1968-74. Dowell was the first person from Atlantic Canada to be elected president of the CAHA. Hanson Dowell was inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame in 1980."^[3][4]

His son, C. Hanson Dowell, a Nova Scotia lawyer, briefly made headlines in 2004 when he was nominated as interim leader of the "Progressive Conservative Party of Canada" following the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada in 2003.^[5][6]

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