Rupert David Ramsay (1899 – 24 August 1962) was a Canadian politician who served as the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1949.
[1] Ramsay was born in 1899 in Toronto, Ontario, and moved in 1905 to Bladworth, Saskatchewan with his father, who specialized in raising Clydesdale horses and farming seed grains.
[1] Aside from a one-year stint with the Industrial and Development Council of Canadian Meat Packers, Ramsay worked with the University of Saskatchewan's Agricultural Extension Department as a livestock specialist throughout the 1930s and early 1940s.
The leadership convention chose Ramsay, who was then a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, much to the delight of establishment members who desired an agricultural leader from Saskatoon.
Despite this and many other novel platform commitments, the election was traded by voters as a two-way competition between the Liberal Party and the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation.
[3] Tommy Douglas' Co-operative Commonwealth Federation overwhelmingly won the election with 53% of the popular vote, filling 47/52 legislature seats.
[4] In the election of June 24, 1948, Ramsay faced now-Premier Tommy Douglas with his Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the new leader of the Liberal Party, Walter Tucker, a former Member of Parliament.
[3] Ramsay ran on a new platform that promised a wheat stabilization fund to provide security for farm income, and cooperation with the federal government as they developed a national universal healthcare plan.