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About Donovan Swailes
- Donovan Swailes (born August 12, 1892 in Leeds, England; died December 10, 1984) was a politician and musician in Manitoba, Canada.
- He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as a member of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation from 1945 to 1959.Swailes was raised in Leeds, and worked in the textile industry.
- His father was a coal miner, who later worked in a woollen mill.
- His mother was active in the Salvation Army and the suffragette movement, and served time in prison for smashing windows in a London department store during a demonstration.
- The younger Swailes played the trombone for the Salvation Army and took courses from the University of Leeds.
- During World War I, he worked as a musician at the Opera House in Cork, Ireland, and later for the Australian Navy.
- After the war, he toured New Zealand with a professional band. He moved to Canada in 1920, and became involved in the country's labour and social-democratic movements.
- He joined the Independent Labour Party in 1925, and later became the first president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour.
- In 1943, he represented Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Trades and Labour Council at the Convention of the American Federation of Labour.
- In the same year, he was elected secretary-treasurer of the Manitoba CCF.
- He served on the board of directors of the Winnipeg Musicians Union, the Executive Committee of Family Bureau, and the Advisory Board of the Manitoba Department of Education. Originally a farmer after moving to Canada, Swailes later became a member of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Hugh Ross and Bernard Naylor.
- He became Secretary of the Musicians' Union in 1934. He was first elected to the Manitoba legislature in the provincial election of 1945, for the Winnipeg constituency.
- At the time, Winnipeg elected ten members by a single transferable ballot.
- Swailes finished thirteenth on the first count, but was declared elected to the seventh position on the thirteenth count following transfers from other CCF candidates.
- Swailes was an important organizer for the CCF in this campaign, working with David Lewis and Lloyd Stinson. Winnipeg's electoral map was redrawn for the 1949 provincial election.
- Swailes ran for re-election in the Winnipeg Centre constituency, which elected four members via a single transferable ballot.
- He finished in second place, and was declared elected on the first count.
- In the 1953 election, he was re-elected at the top of the poll.Swailes ran for Mayor of Winnipeg in 1948 losing to Garnet Coulter.
- He ran again in 1952, but finished third against Coulter and Stephen Juba. Winnipeg abandoned multi-member constituencies for the 1958 provincial election and Swailes was re-elected in the constituency of Assiniboia, defeated Progressive Conservative George William Johnson by 131 votes.
- Assiniboia was a marginal seat, and Swailes had little assistance from party headquarters in this campaign.
- He was defeated in the 1959 election, losing to Johnson by 217 votes. Swailes was elected to the Winnipeg city council later in 1959, and served for over a decade.
- He attempted a comeback at the provincial level in the 1962 provincial election, running in Winnipeg Centre as a candidate of the New Democratic Party (which replaced the CCF in 1961).
- He finished a surprisingly poor third against Progressive Conservative James Cowan, but was re-elected in the third ward of Winnipeg's City Council in 1963. Former CCF leader Lloyd Stinson once described Swailes as "the hardest worker on the opposition side".
- He was active in many issues, and often criticized the Douglas Campbell administration for its conservatism. He died in Victoria, British Columbia at the age of 92.Swailes's brother, Robert Swailes, was a parliamentarian in British Columbia.
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