George Hees

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Image:GeorgeHeesVisitsEskimos.jpg George Harris Hees, PC , OC (June 17 1910 - June 11 1996) was a Canadian politician.

Born in Toronto to a patrician family, Hees earned a playboy image during his youth, but then became a stalwart member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He was educated at the exclusive Crescent School in Toronto, Trinity College School in Port Hope, Ontario, the Royal Military College (where we was awarded an honorary Doctor of Military Science in 1986), the University of Toronto, and spent a year at Cambridge University 1933.

He was a noted athlete, winning championships in boxing and lacrosse at Cambridge, and the Grey Cup with the Toronto Argonauts Canadian football team in December 1938. He went to Europe to fight in World War II, where he was wounded by a sniper in the Battle of the Scheldt in 1944.

After placing second to David Croll in the Toronto riding of Spadina in the 1945 federal election, he won election to the Canadian House of Commons in a 1950 by-election in the nearby riding of Broadview. He was also President of the Progressive Conservative Party from 1953 to 1956.

With the election of the Diefenbaker government in 1957, Hees was named Minister of Transport, and oversaw the opening of the St Lawrence Seaway. In 1960, he was appointed Minister of Trade and Commerce. During this period, Hees was regarded as the second most powerful man in the Tory party. However, in 1963, he had falling out with Diefenbaker, and became embroiled in the Munsinger Affair and elected to sit out the 1963 election, which the Tories lost to Lester Pearson.

After considering a defection to the Liberals, he became President of the Montreal Stock Exchange, he returned to Parliament in the 1965 election as a PC, defeating Pauline Jewett in the rural riding of Northumberland, and remained in the front rows of the opposition ranks for almost two decades.

He ran for the leadership of the PC Party at its 1967 leadership convention, and placed fourth in a field of eleven on the first ballot. He remained for two further ballots before withdrawing, and supporting the eventual winner, Robert Stanfield. He was not named to Cabinet during the Joe Clark government in 1979, and was quoted as Clark stepped down in the 1983 leadership race; "We've got him! We've got the s.o.b."

When Brian Mulroney led the party to a majority government in 1984, Hees was named Minister of Veterans Affairs. Hees retired from politics in 1988. In 1989 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

There is a veterans wing at Toronto's Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre bearing his name, and in close proximinty to the relocated Crescent School he attended as a child.

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