[4] In Lethbridge he was involved in music: he took charge of his church's choir in 1891, and the same year sang at a local concert after the intended headliner, Nora Clench, failed to show up.

[11] After Alberta's two most prominent Liberals, Peter Talbot and Frank Oliver, made it clear that they were not interested, DeVeber considered himself as a possible candidate.

[10] Less than two months before Alberta's formal creation, he wrote to his colleague in the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories, Alexander Cameron Rutherford, that the possibilities "practically came to you and I, both of us weak enough God knows but we have the sense to see it.

"[12] DeVeber's belief that he may be appointed premier does not appear to have been well-founded: his opposition to the introduction of party lines earned him the enmity of some Liberals, not least because it aligned him with Haultain, a Conservative.

He made clear that he viewed the appointment as an interim one, to give Rutherford time to evaluate the many novice politicians entering the new province's legislature and, in DeVeber's words, "ascertain who of the new blood will rise to the surface".

[10] In keeping with the expectations of a government minister in the Westminster system, DeVeber ran in the 1905 provincial election, defeating Conservative William Carlos Ives by a comfortable margin in the Lethbridge electoral district.

One issue examined by this committee was water pollution: beginning in March 1909 and for nearly a year afterwards, it studied the question in view of the increasing mortality from typhoid fever, and concluded, in the words of the University of Michigan's Jennifer Read, "that the country required some form of legislation to manage the problem.

"[16] As chair of the committee, DeVeber attended an October 1910 federal-provincial conference in Ottawa called to attempt to coordinate all Canadian jurisdictions' responses to water pollution.