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John A. Gamble

Canadian politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ6217689
Source-derived summary

John Albert Gamble QC, LLB (November 24, 1933 – May 11, 2009) was a Canadian politician. He served in the House of Commons of Canada as a Progressive Conservative from 1979 until 1984.

Personal

Gamble was born in Perth. He worked as a tax lawyer before his political career and was director of the Unionville Home Society. He died in 2009 from leukaemia in Markham.

Political

Gamble became a Member of Parliament after his victory in the 1979 federal election defeating then Liberal incumbent Member of Parliament, Barney Danson, and re-elected in 1980, representing the riding of York North.

He had a rocky relationship with PC leader Joe Clark. He was a candidate to succeed Clark at the 1983 Progressive Conservative leadership convention, but won only seventeen votes on the first ballot, placing seventh out of eight candidates, and was eliminated. Gamble was known for his extreme anti-communist views. He became so unpopular that he was one of only two Progressive Conservative MPs to lose their seat in the 1984 general election, which produced a Progressive Conservative landslide, one of the largest majorities in the history of the Canadian House of Commons.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “John A. Gamble” as canadian politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1933, 2009, 1979, 1984—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1933-11-24. The account is most persuasive where John, Gamble and Canadian can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as canadian politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6217689. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 2009, 1979 and 1984.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “John A. Gamble”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow John A. Gamble primary sources, John A. Gamble archive and John research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “John A. Gamble”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from John A. Gamble” 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.