Alexander Bell Patterson (April 22, 1911 – April 2, 1993) was a long-time Canadian

member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

(MP) and was briefly leader of the

Social Credit Party of Canada The Social Credit Party of Canada (french: Parti Crédit social du Canada), colloquially known as the Socreds, was a populist political party in Canada that promoted social credit theories of monetary reform. It was the federal wing of the Canadi ...

. He was the son of an Irish father and Scottish mother who immigrated to Canada in 1901. He grew up on the family's farm until moving to

Portage la Prairie Portage la Prairie () is a small city in the Central Plains Region of Manitoba, Canada. As of 2016, the population was 13,304 and the land area of the city was . Portage la Prairie is approximately west of Winnipeg, along the Trans-Canada Hi ...

to work in a grocery store. Later he attended the Salvation Army Leadership Training School in Toronto. In 1938, he married Charlotte Nice, a Salvation Army officer from Neepawa, Manitoba. They raised four children. From 1935 until 1953, he led churches in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. In 1953, while minister of the

Church of the Nazarene The Church of the Nazarene is an evangelicalism, evangelical Christian denomination that emerged in North America from the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement within Methodism. It is headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas, Lenexa within Johnson Cou ...

in Abbotsford, British Columbia, he was elected to House of Commons of Canada in the 1953 election from the riding of

Fraser Valley The Fraser Valley is a geographical region in southwestern British Columbia, Canada and northwestern Washington State. It starts just west of Hope in a narrow valley encompassing the Fraser River and ends at the Pacific Ocean stretching from the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. He was defeated in the 1958 election. He ran for the party leadership at the 1961 Social Credit leadership convention but withdrew before the first ballot. Patterson returned to Parliament in

1962 Events January * January 1 – Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand. * January 3 – Pope John XXIII excommunicates Fidel Castro for preaching communism. * January 8 – Harmelen train disaster: 93 die in the wor ...

. He became acting leader of the Social Credit Party in 1967 when leader Robert N. Thompson resigned citing the party's lack of financial support from its BC and Alberta wings. Once the writs were dropped for the 1968 election, Thompson sought and won the

Progressive Conservative Party of Canada The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (PC; french: Parti progressiste-conservateur du Canada) was a centre-right federal political party in Canada that existed from 1942 to 2003. From Canadian Confederation in 1867 until 1942, the ...

nomination in his riding. Bud Olson had left the party a few months before joining the Liberal Party of Canada, leaving Patterson as the acting leader of the remaining three-person Social Credit caucus into the 1968 election in which all three MPs were defeated, including Patterson in

Fraser Valley East Fraser Valley East was a federal electoral district in British Columbia, Canada, that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1968 to 1997. This riding was created in 1966 from parts of Fraser Valley, Kamloops and Okanagan Bo ...

. Patterson returned to Parliament in the 1972 election representing

as a Progressive Conservative, and was subsequently re-elected as a Tory until his retirement from politics in 1984.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, Alexander Bell 1911 births 1993 deaths Members of the House of Commons of Canada from British Columbia Social Credit Party of Canada MPs Progressive Conservative Party of Canada MPs Social Credit Party of Canada leaders Church of the Nazarene ministers