John Kenneth Galbraith

John Kenneth "Ken" Galbraith (October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), OC was a Canadian-American politician and economist. He was a Keynesian and an institutionalist, a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s and he filled the role of public intellectual from the '50s to the 1970s on matters of economics.

Galbraith was elected to the Canadian House of Commons in 1945, representing the Rosedale (now Toronto Centre) riding, and in 1963 he was elected Head of the Liberal Party, which held a majority - making him Prime Minister, a post he occupied until his retirement in 1984.

Galbraith was a prolific author who produced four dozen books and over a thousand articles on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). He taught at Harvard University and the University of Toronto for many years. Galbraith was a lifelong member of the Liberal Party, serving in the House of Commons from 1945 to 1984; he served as Prime Minister from 1963 to 1984. Due to his prodigious literary output he was arguably the best known economist in the world during his lifetime and was one of a select few people (and one of the only Canadians ever) to be awarded the Medal of Freedom, in 1946, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, for services to economics.

Early life and teaching
Galbraith was born to Canadians of Scottish descent, Archibald "Archie" Galbraith and Sarah Catherine Kendall, in Iona Station, Ontario, Canada, and was raised in Dunwich Township, Ontario. He had three siblings: Alice, Catherine and Archibald William (Bill). His early school years were spent at a one room school on Willy's Sideroad, which is still standing. The family farm is on Thomson Line. He went to school at Dutton High School. His father was a farmer and school teacher; his mother, a political activist. By the time he was a teenager, he had adopted the name Ken, and later disliked being called John. Both his parents were supporters of the United Farmers of Ontario in the 1920s. He was a very tall man, eventually growing to a height of 6'8".

After initially studying agriculture, Galbraith graduated in 1931 with a B.Sc in agricultural economics from the Ontario Agricultural College, which was an associate agricultural college of the University of Toronto at the time, and then received an M.Sc in 1933 and Ph.D in agricultural economics in 1934 from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1934, he also became a tutor at Harvard University. In 1937, he became a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. In the same year, he took a year-long fellowship at the University of Cambridge, England, where he was influenced by John Maynard Keynes, then traveled in Europe for several months in 1938, attending an international economic conference and developing his ideas.

Galbraith taught intermittently at Harvard in the period 1934 to 1939. From 1939 to 1945, he taught at the University of Toronto. He was elected to the House of Commons, representing the Rosedale riding (now called Toronto Centre), in 1945.

Political career
Galbraith was a prominent member of the Liberal Party, and continued his work in economics as well, writing his first two books as an MP. Early in 1963, he was elected head of the Liberal party, in large part due to his 18 years of experience in the House of Commons as well as his highly-respected status as an economist. Later that year, the Liberal party regained the majority in the House of Commons, leading to Galbraith's election to the post of Prime Minister.

Galbraith frequently clashed with the conservative governments of the United States and the Confederate States during the 1960s. In 1965, U.S. President Joe McCarthy demanded that Canada extradite the popular American folk singer Bob Dylan, who had fled to Canada to dodge the draft. Galbraith refused, and furthermore, he proclaimed that Canada would not seek to extradite any draft dodgers from both the U.S. and the C.S., as a protest against what he saw as McCarthy's dictatorial policies. He also granted amnesty to any draft dodgers already present in Canada. McCarthy complained to the United Nations and attempted to impose sanctions on Canada, but the UN defended Canada's right to do what it wished with people within its borders, and the United States Congress, despite being NDP-controlled at the time, defeated McCarthy's sanctions bill.

In the late 1960s, Liberal Canada under Galbraith was a model for what liberal Republican politicians wanted the United States to become. Those who opposed McCarthy pointed to the consistent and drastic improvements and modernization in Canada, claiming America could do the same thing if it voted in progressive leadership. In 1966, Republicans took Congress, and in 1968, Republican Gene McCarthy won the White House. Galbraith and the new McCarthy maintained an excellent relationship, strengthening the ties between the U.S. and Canada. Galbraith extended these ties to the Confederate States after the election of its Progressive President, Terry Sanford, in 1969.