Donald Matheson Sutherland Explained

Honorific-Prefix:The Honourable
Donald Sutherland
Smallimage:Donald Matheson Sutherland.jpg
Office:Minister of National Defence
Primeminister:Richard Bedford Bennett
Term Start:August 7, 1930
Term End:November 16, 1934
Predecessor:James Ralston
Successor:Grote Stirling
Birth Date:3 December 1879
Birth Place:Norwich, Ontario
Death Place:Woodstock, Ontario
Allegiance: Canada
Branch:Canadian Expeditionary Force
Rank:Lieutenant Colonel
Unit:1st Battalion (Ontario Regiment), CEF
Serviceyears:1908-1918
Battles:World War I
Commands:52nd Battalion (New Ontario), CEF

Donald Matheson Sutherland, (December 3, 1879 – June 4, 1970) was a Canadian physician and politician.

Biography

He ran for public office, as a Laurier Liberal, in the 1917 federal election held as a result of the Conscription Crisis of 1917, but was defeated in the riding of Oxford North.

By 1921, he had changed allegiances to the Conservatives and, in the 1925 general election, won the seat of Oxford North and became a Tory Member of Parliament in the House of Commons of Canada. He was defeated, however, in the 1926 general election which returned the Liberals under William Lyon Mackenzie King to power following the King-Byng Affair.

Sutherland returned to Parliament as a result of the 1930 general election which was won by the Conservatives under R. B. Bennett. Bennett appointed Matheson to Cabinet as Minister of National Defence. In 1934, with the country reeling from the Great Depression, Bennett, as prime minister, instituted his own version of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. He appointed Sutherland as Minister of Pensions and National Health. Bennett's reforms were insufficient to appease an unruly electorate, however, and the Bennett government was defeated in the 1935 general election. Sutherland lost his own parliamentary seat.