Charles Lionel Gibbs (November 11, 1877 – September 5, 1934) was a politician in

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, Canada. He served as a municipal councillor in

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from 1924 until his death and, concurrently, a member of the

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from 1926 until his death.

Early life

Gibbs was born November 11, 1877, in Newport, Monmouthshire,

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and was educated at Surrey and

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, training as an architect. He emigrated to Canada in 1907, and established an architecture firm in Edmonton, Barnes and Gibbs, that same year. He also taught at the Edmonton Technical High School, and chaired the city's Parks Commission in 1912.

Politics

Edmonton municipal politics

Gibbs first sought elected office in the 1910 election, when he ran for alderman on the Edmonton City Council. He finished ninth of eleven candidates, and was not elected (the top five were). After this, he did not seek election again until

1914 This year saw the beginning of what became known as World War I, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austrian throne was Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, assassinated by Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip. It als ...

, when he was elected as a school trustee. He served his two-year term in this position, but did not seek re-election at its conclusion. In the 1924 election, Gibbs was elected as an alderman running on the Labour slate, finishing fourth of eleven candidates. He finished first of twelve candidates in his 1926 re-election attempt, and was similarly re-elected in the

1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhan ...

(first of fourteen candidates),

1930 Events January * January 15 – The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. This is the closest moon distance at in recent history, and the next one will b ...

(second of twelve), and

1932 Events January * January 4 – The British authorities in India arrest and intern Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel. * January 9 – Sakuradamon Incident: Korean nationalist Lee Bong-chang fails in his effort to assassinate Emperor Hiro ...

(first of fifteen) re-election attempts. While on city council, he participated in Labour's first

de facto ''De facto'' ( ; , "in fact") describes practices that exist in reality, whether or not they are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms. It is commonly used to refer to what happens in practice, in contrast with ''de jure'' ("by la ...

majority on Council (while Labour only had five aldermen - Gibbs, L.S.C. Dineen,

James East James East (October 7, 1871 – June 23, 1940) was a politician and labour activist in Alberta, Canada. He was for a time and the longest-serving alderman in Edmonton's history, and was a defeated candidate at the provincial and federal levels ...

, Alfred Farmilo, and James Findlay - a sixth, Rice Sheppard had been elected as independent labour candidate as was sympathetic to Labour's views). Lionel was still in office at the time of his death.

Provincial politics

Gibbs sought provincial office as a member of the Labour Party in the riding of

during the 1926 provincial election. At the time, the riding had five seats, elected using a

single transferable vote Single transferable vote (STV) is a multi-winner electoral system in which voters cast a single vote in the form of a ranked-choice ballot. Voters have the option to rank candidates, and their vote may be transferred according to alternate ...

electoral system. On the first count, he finished ninth of eighteen candidates; however, on subsequent counts the redistribution of votes from defeated candidates made him the third of five candidates elected. He was re-elected in the 1930 election, when he finished third of seventeen candidates on the first count. His vote total was more than enough to be elected, and he with Lymburn and Duggan were awarded seats on the first count. He was still an MLA at the time of his death in 1934.

Death

Charles Gibbs died September 5, 1934, in Sault Ste. Marie,

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, while on a tour of eastern Canada.

References

Edmonton Public Library Biography of Charles Lionel GibbsCity of Edmonton biography of Charles Lionel Gibbs
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gibbs, Charles Lionel 1877 births 1934 deaths Edmonton city councillors Dominion Labor Party (Alberta) MLAs Welsh emigrants to Canada People from Newport, Wales Canadian architects Canadian military personnel of World War I Canadian schoolteachers