Political farmer clubs pistol-packing bandits
Sunday, 10 January 2010 00:00
January 10, 1920. Pistol-packing robbers "made a grave error" when they attempted to hold up 60-year-old Robert Henry Grant , a farmer and education minister in the Ontario United Farmers and Labor government of Premier Ernest Charles Drury, the Kingston British Whig reports.
Grant was on his way to his Parliamentary office at Queen's Park in Toronto on a Friday evening about 9:15 when two men came from behind the monument. "Hi," called out one them. "Wait and we will walk up with you." Mr. Grant turned and the two men came up.
One of the two men presented a revolver toward the minister and ordered him to "put his hands up." Like lightning, Mr. Grant brought down his walking stick upon the head of the bandit. The man reeled from the blow and dropped his revolver. Before he could recover, Mr. Grant smashed him again across the back of the head, breaking his walking stick. The man turned and ran.
His companion wrestled with the minister. Mr. Grant was holding him by the coat when he struck the minister a terrific blow on the left temple with his fist. For a moment Mr. Grant dropped his hold, and the second bandit in his turn fled swiftly away.
The minister sustained a cut under the temple and an ugly lump under the left eye. The revolver was a 32-calibre five-chambered weapon, containing four cartridges.
"I was born a farmer, am a farmer and am nothing else," Grant once declared. "My farm has been my principal attraction and comfort." But he also found time for an active political life.
Robert Grant's father died in a fire when Grant was 10. After spending "some time at the University of Ontario and the Ontario Agricultural College in Guelph," according to the Canadian Dictionary of Biography, Grant assumed management of the large family farm near Hazeldean. He entered politics at age 22, winning election to the Carleton County Council. For the next 32 years, he combined farming and local politics as a staunch Conservative, before switching parties to join the United Farmers of Ontario after its formation in 1914. In the provincial elections of 1919, Grant won a "stunning majority," and was appointed education minister "to some extent because of his post-secondary education." Although he is reported to have served competently as education minister, his "stunning majority" evaporated and he was defeated in the 1923 elections. He returned to his farm, where he died seven years later.