Thomas Kidd (Ontario politician) explained

Thomas Ashmore Kidd
Riding1:Kingston City
Term Start1:1945
Term End1:1949
Predecessor1:Angus Lewis Macdonald
Successor1:William Henderson
Office2:Ontario MPP
Term Start2:1926
Term End2:1940
Predecessor2:William Folger Nickle
Successor2:Harry Allan Stewart
Constituency2:Kingston
Order3:18th
Office3:Speaker of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario
Term Start3:1930
Term End3:1935
Predecessor3:William Black
Successor3:Norman Hipel
Party:Conservative
Birth Date:1889 5, df=yes
Birth Place:Burritt's Rapids, Ontario
Occupation:Merchant

Thomas Ashmore Kidd (May 1, 1889  - December 19, 1973) was speaker of the Legislature of Ontario in 1930–34 and served as Conservative MLA for Kingston from 1926 to 1940 and Progressive Conservative MP for Kingston City from 1945 to 1949.

He was born in Burritt's Rapids, Ontario, the nephew of Edward Kidd, and was educated there and in Kemptville. Kidd was a manufacturer and wholesale merchant. He served in France with the Royal Regiment of Canada in 1915 and was wounded at Ypres. In 1920, he married Eva Richardson, the daughter of senator Henry Westman Richardson. Kidd was a member of Kingston city council from 1922 to 1926 and also served on the Kingston Board of Works. He won the Conservative nomination in Kingston after the incumbent Conservative, William Folger Nickle, resigned from the cabinet of Howard Ferguson in order to protest the government's decision to run for re-election on the platform of repealing the Ontario Temperance Act and allowing government controlled liquor sales. Kidd defeated Nickle who ran as a Prohibitionist candidate in the 1926 provincial election.

Kidd was re-elected in the 1929 provincial election and served as Speaker of the Ontario Legislative Assembly from 1930 until 1934.

He resigned from the provincial legislature to run unsuccessfully for the House of Commons of Canada in the 1940 federal election but won on his second attempt in 1945. Kidd was defeated in bid for re-election in 1949 and again when he tried to return to politics in 1957. Kidd was also a Grand Master in the Orange Lodge.

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