Sir James Alexander Lougheed, KCMG, (September 1 1854 – November 2 1925) was a Canadian politician. Lougheed was a lawyer by training beginning his career in Toronto before relocating to Calgary, where he formed a partnership with R. B. Bennett. A Conservative, he was appointed to the Canadian Senate in 1889 by Sir John A. Macdonald. In 1906, he became Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and, when the Conservatives took power following the 1911 Canadian election he became Leader of the Government in the Senate and minister without portfolio in the government of Sir Robert Borden. He was made Chairman of the Military Hospitals Commission in 1915 and, as a reward for this service, was knighted in 1916 (knight commander of the Order of St Michael and St George).

After Borden formed his wartime Union government he made Lougheed Minister of Soldiers' Civil Re-establishment in 1918. From 1920 until the Conservative Party's defeat in the 1921 Canadian election he also served as Minister of Mines, Minister of the Interior and Superintendent-General of Indian Affairs in the government of Arthur Meighen.

With the Liberals in power, Lougheed resumed his position as Leader of the Opposition in the Senate until his death in 1925.

Lougheed was also a successful businessman through his real estate, newspapers, and other ventures in Calgary. He was a staunch advocate of provincial status for what became Alberta and argued that the province rather than the federal government should have control of natural resources (an argument carried on by his grandson, Peter Lougheed, when he was premier of Alberta in the 1970s and 1980s).

He died in Ottawa in 1925. In 1928 a mountain near Calgary was named Mount Lougheed in his honour. The town of Lougheed, Alberta , is also named for him.

External links

• The Lougheed House Calgary museum.