Duff Pattullo

Thomas Dufferin "Duff" Pattullo (January 19, 1873–March 30, 1956) was a Canadian politician who served as the 22nd Premier of British Columbia from 1933 to 1941. A member of the British Columbia Liberal Party, he led the province's response to the Great Depression with an ambitious program of public works, minimum wage increases, and social spending that historians have called the "Little New Deal," the most vigorous provincial response to the Depression anywhere in Canada.

Born in Woodstock, Ontario, to a prominent Liberal political family, Pattullo worked as a journalist before travelling to the Klondike in 1897 as secretary to the Yukon Commissioner. He spent a decade in the Yukon, where he served as acting Gold Commissioner and was elected to the Dawson City council. He moved to Prince Rupert in 1908, served as mayor, and entered provincial politics in 1916 as Minister of Lands. After becoming Liberal leader in 1928, he led the party to a landslide victory in the 1933 election.

As premier, Pattullo clashed repeatedly with the federal governments of R. B. Bennett and William Lyon Mackenzie King over economic policy and provincial autonomy. He rejected the centralizing recommendations of the Rowell-Sirois Commission in 1941, and his handling of Bloody Sunday (1938) damaged his support among organized labour. After the 1941 election returned a minority government, his caucus overruled his refusal to form a coalition with the Conservatives, and he resigned as leader and premier. Historian Robin Fisher has argued that Pattullo was the most significant British Columbia premier of the twentieth century.