He was a shareholder in Co-Operative Dairy and Poultry,[3] and enlisted for service in World War I in 1916.
[2] Sutherland also served for twenty years as a school trustee, and for fifteen as a steward in the United Church.
In the 1949 provincial election, Sutherland lost his seat by forty votes to Progressive Conservative candidate Thomas Seens, who was also a supporter of the coalition government.
The Progressive Conservatives left the coalition in 1950, and Sutherland defeated Seens in the 1953 election[1] by over 400 votes.
Sutherland was never appointed to cabinet, and was a backbench supporter of the governments of John Bracken, Stuart Garson and Douglas Campbell.