Pearson, George Frederick

  • DCB profile notes:
    • Lawyer, newspaperman, political éminence grise, and university governor; b. 5 Oct. 1876 in Truro, N.S., eldest child and only son of Benjamin Franklin Pearson and Julia Reading; m. first 20 Dec. 1900 Ethel Rebecca Belcher Miller (d. 5 Feb. 1912) in Halifax County, and they had one daughter; m. there secondly 30 April 1913 Agnes Crawford (d. 1966), and they had one daughter and one son; d. 21 Sept. 1938 in Halifax.
    • George Frederick Pearson was born to the Liberal purple. From 1806 to 1818 his paternal great-great-grandfather had served as a member in Nova Scotia’s House of Assembly, and his grandfather had been elected the Liberal mp for Colchester in 1870. His father, a lawyer and businessman, would become a minister in the cabinet of Premier George Henry Murray. Benjamin Franklin Pearson’s success in business enabled G. Fred, as he was usually known, to study at the Dalhousie law school in Halifax, where he took his degree in 1900. Called to the bar on 24 March of that year, he articled with his father’s law firm, Pearson and Covert, and later became its head. He worked for one of his father’s newspapers as well, becoming managing director and editor (afterwards proprietor and publisher) of the Halifax Morning Chronicle, which included morning and evening dailies and a weekly.
    • Pearson became active in charitable work during World War I and took a leading part in Halifax’s efforts to assist Belgium. His role in the dispatch of the steamer Tremorvah, the first North American vessel carrying supplies to reach the occupied country, was recognized by a grateful nation when he was made an officer of the Order of the Crown of Belgium on 14 Nov. 1919. He assisted his own community by chairing the Reconstruction Committee in the immediate aftermath of the devastating Halifax explosion on 6 Dec. 1917.
    • Unlike his father, Pearson had no particular interest in business, though in other ways he followed in his father’s footsteps, building assiduously on the family’s political credentials. The conscription crisis of 1917 split the provincial as well as the federal Liberals, and Pearson was among the few who rose above the divisions and worked to reunify the party. For the rest of his life he was the most powerful unelected Liberal in Nova Scotia, confidential adviser to George Henry Murray during his later years as premier and William Stevens Fielding during his second tenure as federal minister of finance. The overwhelming defeat of the Liberals in the provincial election of 1925 came as a blow. Pearson threw himself into rebuilding and saw his efforts rewarded with the triumph in the 1933 provincial election and the Liberal sweep of Nova Scotia’s 12 seats in the federal election two years later.
    • G. Fred Pearson was the very model of elite lawyer as exemplary public citizen. A low-church evangelical Anglican and a progressive Liberal with a sensitive social conscience, he was able to combine disinterested public service with intense political partisanship behind the scenes.
  • Second Great Grandson of United Empire Loyalist listed in Loyalist Directory: https://uelac.ca/loyalist-directory/detail/?wpda_search_column_id=6477
  • Find a GRAVE: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/192160821/george_frederic-pearson