John Bracken PC (22 June 1883 – 18 March 1969) was a Canadian agronomist and politician who was the 11th and longest-serving premier of Manitoba (1922–1943) and later the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada (1942–1948).

During his tenure as premier of Manitoba, he implemented policies dominated by rural interests and opposed organized labour.

After being elected leader of the newly renamed party, he resigned as premier of Manitoba and led the PCs to a second-place finish during the 1945 Canadian federal election against the incumbent Liberal Party government led by Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.

After being defeated while running for reelection to the House of Commons in the 1949 federal election, he retired from politics and died in 1969.

[3] Not long after graduating from the Ontario Agricultural College, Bracken moved to Manitoba, where he worked for the Dominion Seed Branch.

The UFM's expectations had been so low going into the election that they had not even named a leader and ran candidates in only two thirds of the seats.

[4] He was sworn in as premier on August 8 and entered the legislature a few months later after winning a deferred election in the northern riding of The Pas.

The United Farmers generally rejected the partisanship of the Liberal and Conservative parties and favoured government policies based on independence and principles of business management.

He lowered expenditures in health, education, and welfare but introduced a pension for all citizens over seventy years old in 1928.

He successfully had the Hudson Bay Railway create a branch line to Flin Flon, resulting in the opening of a copper and zinc mine there in 1926.

In 1940, Bracken formed a wartime coalition government that included the Conservative, Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) and Social Credit parties.

When Bracken left provincial politics in 1943, there were only 5 opposition Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) in a 57-member parliament.

[9] The Liberal Prime Minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King, by contrast had promised that one division of volunteers would take part in the invasion of Japan.

Though his leadership of the Tories was generally viewed as a failure, he would gain some small degree of vindication in his later years as his western populist policies would be employed more successfully by John Diefenbaker, who succeeded Drew as leader in 1956, gaining the party a power base in the western provinces that would reliably support them from the late 1950s until their fall as a party of government in 1993.