John Robert Boyle

In 1905, Boyle ran in Alberta's inaugural provincial election as the Liberal candidate in Sturgeon, where he defeated Conservative Frank Knight by a wide margin.[8] Boyle served as Deputy Speaker in the 1st Alberta Legislative Assembly.[1] (To focus on government affairs, Boyle resigned as Edmonton alderman on May 7, 1906, and a by-election was held to fill his empty seat.[9])

During his first term, Boyle supported the selection of Edmonton (over rival Calgary) as the new province's capital,[10] and supported the Liberal government of Alexander Cameron Rutherford in its decision to borrow money to finance the creation of Alberta Government Telephones (abandoning its usual "pay as you go" approach). Boyle predicted that "Alberta, the first to undertake [a provincial government telephone system] will become a model for every province in the Dominion."[11] He also sided with the government in its rejection of Conservative demands that it build and operate railways, as he felt that doing so would not be viable as long as the trunk lines were in private hands.[12] He enthusiastically backed private construction of railways, however, and greeted the announcement of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway—which was to run northward from Edmonton to Lac la Biche and later Fort McMurray—with what historian L. G. Thomas describes as "an extravagant eulogy...[speaking] of Lac la Biche as another Lake Louise, of Pullmans running from New Orleans to the Arctic circle, and of northern Alberta as a second Cobalt region."[13]

The Rutherford government was comfortably re-elected in the 1909 election;[14] Boyle himself was acclaimed in Sturgeon.[15] Shortly after the elections, rumours began to spread that all was not well with the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway (A&GWR), to which the government had given loan guarantees and on whose behalf it had sold bonds in the London bond market. When the new legislature convened in February 1910, Boyle tabled a list of eleven questions for the government about the A&GWR. Rutherford, Minister of Railways as well as Premier, duly answered them in writing.[16] Boyle found these answers unsatisfactory, and on February 21 gave notice of a motion to expropriate the A&GWR's bond money; he held that the government had raised more money for the A&GWR than was needed for construction. He also alleged that S. B. Woods, deputy to Attorney-General Charles Wilson Cross, had removed key components from the government's files on the A&GWR, in advance of their having been inspected by Boyle and Conservative leader R. B. Bennett.[17]

Boyle's resolution rapidly divided the Liberal members between insurgents, led by Boyle and William Henry Cushing (who resigned his position as Minister of Public Works over the A&GWR issue), and loyalists, led by Rutherford and his remaining cabinet ministers, especially Cross.[17] In the ensuing debate, several charges were levelled against Boyle himself: Agriculture Minister Duncan Marshall accused him of being motivated by his rejection for the position of A&GWR solicitor. Boyle admitted applying for the position, but denied that it had anything to do with his attacks on the government.[18] The Edmonton Bulletin accused him of approaching two Liberal members who were also hotel keepers, Lucien Boudreau and Robert L. Shaw, and offering them immunity from prosecution for liquor offenses if they helped bring down Rutherford's government and replace it with one, led by Cushing, in which Boyle would be Attorney-General.[19]

Though Rutherford survived a motion of non-confidence (moved by Ezra Riley and seconded by Boyle) by three votes,[19] he was successfully pressured to resign by Lieutenant-Governor of Alberta George Bulyea. It had been expected that Cushing would replace Rutherford if the latter was defeated, but Bulyea and other prominent Liberals did not have confidence in him, and instead selected Arthur Sifton, Alberta's Chief Justice.[20]

Sifton left all major figures of the A&GWR affair, including Boyle, out of his first cabinet, and instead appointed fellow judge Charles R. Mitchell Attorney-General.[21] However, in 1912 he decided that enough time had passed for old wounds to heal, and re-appointed Cross as Attorney-General. At the same time, he brought Boyle into his cabinet as Minister of Education.[22] The law required that members newly admitted to cabinet resign their seats in the legislature and immediately contest a by-election; Boyle was re-elected in Sturgeon by a safe margin.[23]

Boyle's time as Education Minister was tumultuous: many teachers enlisted to fight in World War I, and many others left the profession for more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. In its members' handbook, the Alberta Teachers' Association describes Boyle's efforts to remedy this situation as "heroic", citing in particular his convincing the legislature to set a minimum teachers' salary of $840 per year.[24] Another of Boyle's tactics to alleviate the teacher shortage was to make it easier for teachers qualified in Quebec to teach in Alberta.[25] However, this liberalization was subject to applicants' English proficiency: Boyle insisted that all instruction in Alberta schools be delivered in English.[26] A Québécois teacher who passed an English language proficiency exam would be granted a temporary teaching license, which could be upgraded to a full Alberta Teaching Certificate with five months' study at a normal school.[25] Boyle's insistence that Alberta was English offended not only the province's French Canadian minority, but also its Ukrainian-speaking population; an editorial in a Ukrainian newspaper maintained angrily that "the minister of education lies when he says that Alberta is an English province. Alberta is a Canadian province, where everyone has equal rights, including the Ukrainians."[27] During a by-election in Whitford Boyle accused the Conservatives of promising Ukrainian language schools to court the immigrant vote.[28]

In 1918, new premier Charles Stewart, who had succeeded Sifton when the latter entered federal politics in 1917, fired Cross and appointed Boyle Attorney-General.[29] The following year Boyle introduced legislation formally making English Alberta's only official language. At the time, he boasted that in the past election "my majority came from English electors" in contrast to a Conservative who supported "Russian schools for Russian people".[30] As Attorney-General, he also supported unsuccessful legislation to allow Imperial Oil to construct a pipeline in Alberta; in response to bipartisan opposition calling for pipelines to be common carriers, he said that to adopt such a course would be to tell oil companies that they "were free to spend vast sums in exploration work but if oil were found, they were not to pipe it out."[31]

One of Boyle's chief responsibilities as Attorney-General was to enforce Alberta's recently enacted prohibition. This proved difficult, as the law was widely disparaged—not least by judges, who reputedly presided over liquor trials while hungover. In 1921, Boyle estimated that bootleggers were profiting from prohibition to the tune of Can$7 million. He was denounced by supporters of prohibition for his ineffectiveness at enforcing it, and by its opponents for "arrogating to himself the powers of a czar."[32]

In the 1921 election, Boyle both sought re-election in Sturgeon and election in the new multi-member constituency of Edmonton. He was defeated in the former but victorious in the latter, making him one of two members from the 1st Alberta Legislative Assembly to be elected to the 5th; the other was Cross, Boyle's predecessor as Attorney-General and rival from the Alberta and Great Waterways Affair.[Note 2] Provincially, the Liberals were soundly defeated by the United Farmers of Alberta (UFA), which, contesting their first election, won 39 seats to the Liberals' 14.[33]

Late in Stewart's term as premier, there had been speculation that he would resign due to ill-health, and Boyle was among the candidates mentioned as possible successors.[34] When Stewart did resign, immediately following the 1921 election, Boyle was selected to replace him. In the assessment of Lakeland College historian Franklin Foster, Boyle "showed vigour" in the legislature, where he presented a strong opposition to the new UFA government of Herbert Greenfield.[35] Even so, he showed some private courtesy: when John Edward Brownlee, Greenfield's Attorney-General and his strongman in the legislature, missed a session due to illness, Boyle assured him that the Liberals would not attack the government too vigorously in his absence.[36]

Boyle in 1935 with his daughter, Helen, and grandson, Ian

As leader of the Alberta Liberals, Boyle corresponded extensively with Liberal Party of Canada leader (and Prime Minister of Canada) William Lyon Mackenzie King; according to Foster, Boyle's letters to King were "a mixture of useless information and pleas to be rescued by an appointment to the bench."[35] It is possible that one of his letters had some impact on history, however: in 1924, while Greenfield was attempting to negotiate control of Alberta's natural resources from King's federal government, Boyle sent King a letter warning him that the UFA was doomed in the next election unless "something extraordinary happens. That extraordinary thing which Greenfield wants to happen now is obtaining from you the natural resources at once."[37] King drew out negotiations until Greenfield returned to Alberta empty-handed; soon after, Greenfield was forced from office by his own backbenchers, and replaced by Brownlee.[38]