O-460

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painting (portrait)

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The Honourable Pierre-Francois Casgrain

Portrait of Speaker Pierre-François Casgrain

Pierre-François Casgrain is the Speaker who almost never was. Tradition dictates that votes for Speaker are unanimous, though in 1936 opposition parties voted against Casgrain after he had fired many staff members before the Speaker election had even been held. The lawyer, born in Montreal in 1886, left the chair in 1940 to join the Liberal cabinet, around the time Kenneth Forbes painted his portrait. His wife was Thérèse Casgrain, who as head of the Parti social démocratique du Quebec was the first woman to lead a political party in Canada.

Kenneth Forbes

Kenneth Forbes was born in Toronto in 1892, and first studied art with his father, the portraitist John Colin Forbes. He also studied in England and Scotland, until he joined a British machine-gun corps to fight in the First World War. He was gassed and wounded, and twice mentioned in dispatches for gallantry. In 1917 he became a Canadian war artist, and his gripping painting Canadian Artillery in Action is on permanent display at the Canadian War Museum. Forbes was an outspoken foe of modern art and helped to establish the traditionally minded Ontario Institute of Painters.