Tom Rideout
Canadian politician
Thomas "Tom" Gerald Rideout (born June 25, 1948) is a former Canadian politician who served as the fourth premier of Newfoundland from March 22, 1989 to May 5, 1989.
Life and career
Born in Fleur de Lys, Newfoundland, Rideout was first elected to the provincial House of Assembly in the 1975 general election as a Liberal but left the party in 1980 to join the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Brian Peckford in its fight with Ottawa for control of offshore petroleum resources.
Rideout became Minister of Culture, Recreation and Youth in 1984 and became Minister of Fisheries in 1985. With Peckford's retirement from politics in 1989, Rideout was chosen Tory party leader and thus became premier of Newfoundland. One month later, at the 1989 provincial election, the Progressive Conservatives narrowly won a higher percentage of votes than the Liberal Party led by Clyde Wells, but the Liberals won the most seats. Wells replaced Rideout as Premier and Rideout remained Leader of the Opposition until October 1991 when he left politics for a federal appointment as a member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.
Rideout attempted a political comeback in the 1993 federal election, running as the Progressive Conservative candidate in Gander—Grand Falls, but was defeated by Liberal incumbent George Baker.
In 1997, he obtained his law degree from the University of Ottawa, and was called to the Newfoundland bar in 1998.
In 1999, he re-entered public life, and was elected as a Progressive Conservative Member of the House of Assembly for the district of Lewisporte. He was re-elected in 2003, when the PC Party formed the government.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Tom Rideout” as canadian politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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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.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2426822. VIAF identifies the subject as 1878149719131411130009. The Library of Congress control number is no2017075350. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1989, 1975 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tom Rideout” 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.