Isaac Riley
Canadian politician (1853-1926)

Isaac Riley (October 1853—July 8, 1926) was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1899 to 1915 as a member of the Conservative Party.
Riley was born in Mornington Township in Perth County, Canada West (now Ontario), the son of Charles Riley, and was educated at public schools. He entered business as a lumber merchant. In 1876, Riley came to Winnipeg. He later moved to Stonewall, Manitoba where he was a lumber merchant and also owned a hotel. In 1882, Riley married Laura M. Poore.
He was first elected to the Manitoba legislature in the 1899 provincial election, defeating Liberal incumbent Samuel Jacob Jackson by sixty-five votes in the Rockwood constituency. The Conservatives won a majority government, and Riley served as a backbench supporter of the administrations led by the Hugh John Macdonald and Rodmond Roblin. Riley was re-elected in the elections of 1903, 1907, 1910 and 1914, and continued to serve as a government backbencher.
“Isaac Riley” enters the record as canadian politician (1853-1926). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Isaac, Riley and Canadian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Isaac Riley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.