William Gourlay Blair
Canadian politician (1890-1957)
William Gourley Blair (January 13, 1890 in Bathurst Township, Ontario – June 16, 1957) was a politician and physician.
Career
He was elected to the House of Commons of Canada in the 1945 election as a Member of the Progressive Conservative Party to represent the riding of Lanark. He was re-elected in 1949, 1953 and in 1957. He was appointed to the joint committees of Joint Committee on Federal District Commission and Joint Committee on Old Age Security. Prior to his federal political experience, he was a captain in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps between 1916 and 1919.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “William Gourlay Blair” as canadian politician (1890-1957). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as canadian politician (1890-1957). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 14, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8010060. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1890, 1957, 1945 and 1949.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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- Building a first chronology
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “William Gourlay Blair” 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.