JOHN HAWKES.
In the short span of one life, a little more than his allotted threescore
years and ten, John Hawkes, official legislative librarian for the Province
of Saskatchewan, has packed a store of experience and adventure that
would provide a second Joseph Conrad with material for a whole shelf-
full of thrilling tales. The scenes of these stories would be laid in western
Canada for the most part, but they would be fully as picturesque as those
of the China sea.
"A Man of Kent," Mr. Hawkes was born at Aylesford, England, Janu-
ary 12, 1851. He received his education in a private school and when but
a youth was bound out to an old Whig paper, the South Eastern Gazette,
as a press pupil, but after four years invaluable training he broke his
indentures for cause. Coming to Canada at the age of eighteen "on his
own," he earned his living by good, hard, manual labor, first working on
farms in Scott township, near Uxbridge, Ontario, and, later, on the grad-
ing of the Toronto and Nipissing, and the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Rail-
roads. In 1870 he sailed from Sarnia for Chicago, Illinois, on the Great
Lakes, finding employment on the railroads under construc-
tion at the time. In Michigan he was a chopper, clearing the right
of way through the woods from Kalamazoo to the shore of Lake Michi-
gan; then for a time was employed on the Indianapolis, Bloomington &
Western Railroad in Illinois. By degrees he worked himself down to St.
Louis, where he took the steamboat for New Orleans. After spending
a winter in Arkansas and Mississippi, still working at any old thing as
he went along, he returned to England. He sailed from New York city
in November of 1871, in an old Guion four-masted full rigged hooker
called the Minnesota.
For the next thirteen years Mr. Hawkes lived the strenuous life of a
journalist in his native land, during which he "stumped" Mid-Kent in
support of Lord Medway, edited two of the oldest provincial papers in
England, and also the Hereford Evening News. Returning to Canada,
he entered the second period of his adventures, this time in western
Canada, where the frontier was steadily being pushed westward by the
Canadian Pacific Railway and eager settlers. He took part in all the
phases of the multi-colored life of the far west. He homesteaded for six
or seven years; worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Rockies
in 1887 as one of "Tom McMahon's Flying Gang;" ran a well boring
machine, affectionately known as the "mankiller," for a summer and two
winters, and ran for the Northwest Legislature in 1888. In the fall of
1891 he rented his farm, as there was no school, but the following June
found him "at loose ends" and until November of that year he was with
the Blood Indians.
The decade of the '90s witnessed a rapid settlement of Saskatchewan
and the increase in population called for the organization of many gov-
ernmental bodies and business enterprises, all of which interested Mr.
Hawkes greatly and gave him opportunity to make use of his political
and journalistic experience in England. He served as first town clerk,
assessor and collector of Whitewood; justice of the peace; school trustee;
license inspector; vital statistics registrar; president of the Farmers' In-
stitute; secretary of the Agricultural Association. In the spring of 1896,
in company with E. Hopkins and William Watson of the North West
Dairymen's Association, he toured the whole prairie country holding con-
ventions in favor of establishing government creameries. That summer
he was temporary Dominion candidate for East Assiniboia during the
party mix-up. During 1896-1897 he was also busy with the organization
of the Whitewood Creamery Company. In the latter year he turned his
attention again to the field of journalism that has played such an unique
part in his life, and leased the Whitewood Herald. Three years later he
bought the Carnduff Gazette, which was the only newspaper south of the
Canadian Pacific Railway between Manitoba and the foothill country.
Mr. Hawkes was a government lecturer on immigration in England with
headquarters at Charing Cross, London, in 1905-1906, and on his return
to the Dominion was appointed first official legislative librarian for Sas-
katchewan, which office he now holds. Until his appointment to office,
Mr. Hawkes campaigned in practically every election, making his last
political speech at Kinistino, Carrot River country, in 1908, with the late
Speaker John F. Betts. He has also done much writing for the press
and represented the province with the American Editors Association
which toured the west in 1919, as guests of the Dominion of Canada. By
organizing the Saskatchewan Traveling Library System, Mr. Hawkes
initiated and organized a movement that has had far-reaching results.
There are now nearly eight hundred traveling libraries sent out to rural
points where they are gratefully patronized by thousands of people who
would otherwise be deprived of the advantages of educational and enter-
taining reading. Few men have been privileged to witness so epochal a
change in the history of the Canadian west and he has contributed no
unworthy share to its development. It may be added that in 1902 he
edited a remarkable book entitled "Ranching with Lords and Commons,"
by John R. Craig, one of the great pioneer cattlemen of Southern Alberta.
Bibliography follows:
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