(died 11 March 1921, aged 64), socialist. (J. D. Houston, John Houston) Born in Lanark County, Ont. He was the nephew of Rev. Rural Dean R.L.M. Houston (1850-1905), who was rector of Trinity Church, Cornwall, 1894-1905. J.D. Houston taught school in Lancaster village in the early 1880s. A report on the half-yearly meeting of the Glengarry Teachers’ Association held at Alexandria in Sept. 1881 shows Houston (“of Lancaster”) taking an active part in the proceedings. (Cornwall Reporter 15 Oct. 1881) In a speech to a labour meeting in 1920, he remembered that “In my very early years I started life as a school teacher.” In 1884, J. D. Houston was secretary of the Masonic lodge at Lancaster. (Ross, Lancaster, 200) He also lived in Cornwall about this period of his life, and later moved to the Canadian West. At the federal general election of 26 Oct. 1908, he was a candidate under the designation of “Socialist” to be MP for the Winnipeg City constituency, but was defeated, receiving a little over 11 percent of the votes cast. There were two other candidates, one being a Conservative, who was elected, and the other a Liberal, Douglas C. Cameron, formerly of Hawkesbury, Ont. (see H. E. Munroe), who a few years later became lieutenant-governor of Manitoba. Houston lived in Winnipeg during the later years of his life, except for returning back east to do munitions work in Montreal during the war. In Aug. 1919, he became the editor of the One Big Union Bulletin, published in Winnipeg for the labour organization called One Big Union. He died in St. Boniface Hospital, after an illness of several months. (three children surviving him) A recent history of Canadian Marxism accepts Houston as a Marxist and says he “was a much admired figure on the Canadian left.”
At Montreal, on 31 Oct. of a year which was probably 1883, at the home of D. A. McPherson (probably Donald A. McPherson), Houston married Annie Louise McLean, the sister of John A. McLean. Their son Lt. Col. Alex McLean Houston, who reached high military rank at an early age, died in an Ottawa Hospital on 16 Oct. 1918, aged 26, and was buried at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Cemetery, Lancaster. Survivors included both his parents, who at this time were Winnipeg residents.
From unnamed Manitoba newspapers: 7 Aug. 1920: report of his speech to a labour meeting; 12 March 1921: obituary (copies supplied by Legislative Library, Manitoba) * marriage notice, ASC, ii, 35 * socialist candidature: Cornwall Freeholder 10 April 1908 and 20 Years Ago column in CF 12 April 1928 * Dean Houston: William John Patterson, Joyful Is Our Praise: Trinity (Bishop Strachan Memorial) Church 1784-1984 (1984), 199 and index * Lt. Col. Alex McLean Houston: obituary Glengarry News 25 Oct. 1918 (repr. Fraser Obits. 92-93); Fraser, Gravestones, II, 60 * Fraser, Cameron, 70 * Peter Campbell, Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way (1999) 18, 27, 239 (QF)