The Alberta Teachers’ Association

Hedley Clarence Taylor was there at the beginning. The beginning of Edmonton. The beginning of free public schools. The beginning of the province of Alberta itself and its jurisdictional courts. The beginning of the Board of Reference. 

Taylor was born in Sheffield, New Brunswick in 1864. Within a year of graduating law school, Taylor set out for the west. The year was 1892. The old Northwest Territories was still five years away from establishing a democratic legislature. The town of Edmonton had just been incorporated. Every aspect of civic life in the new town — from hospitals to policing — had yet to be established.

Taylor was dedicated to making an impact and, in his later career, presided over the first Board of Reference.

Establishing a board of reference process, whereby teachers can legally challenge unjustified dismissals, was an early objective of the Alberta Teachers’ Association and a key protection of teachers’ professional status. From 1926 to 1937, the Association witnessed the government’s stop-and-start commitments to the Board of Reference. The teacher tenure process as we know it today was finally put in place by the Social Credit government of premier, minister of education and high school principal William Aberhart. Nevertheless, the first cases were heard by the board, including Taylor, in 1926.

Taylor was uniquely suited to adjudicate cases brought by teachers against their employing boards for wrongful dismissal. He was both a lawyer and a school trustee with ties to higher education, having served as chair and a trustee of the Edmonton School Board, chair of the board of Alberta College, and a member of the University of Alberta’s board of governors and senate.

The details of Taylor’s life and career suggest a man possessed of a relentless service ethic, superb education and bound-less energy. There hardly seems to be a community-building cause or concern to which he did not turn his considerable talents and leadership. A senior leader in his Freemason lodge, founding member of the United Empire Loyalists Association of Canada, active in the McDougall United Church, founding member of the Edmonton Public Hospital—Taylor was everywhere.

Taylor’s service to teachers, his community and his province are all but forgotten today. That his contemporaries held him in high esteem is obvious.

“Few men of Edmonton are more widely known throughout the Province and the Northwest than Hedley Clarence Taylor,” wrote Archibald O. MacRae in History of the Province of Alberta, volume 2 (1912).

“He is a man of broad knowledge and scholarly attainments, of strong convictions and fearless in their defense, and withal gracious and considerate in advancing his views” (p. 887).

Reference

MacRae, A.O. 1912. History of the Province of Alberta. Vol. 2. Calgary, AB: Western Canada History Co.

Got an idea? Unsung Hero is a space dedicated to honouring ATA members past and present who have had notable achievements, either in the ATA or in their private lives. If you know of a member whom you feel should be recognized, please contact section editor Lindsay Yakimyshyn at lindsay.yakimyshyn@ata.ab.ca.