John George Shearer
| John George Shearer | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1859-08-09 near Bright, Oxford County, Upper Canada |
| Died | 1925-03-27 Toronto, Ontario |
| Occupation | Presbyterian minister; social reformer |
| Father | |
| Mother | |
| Partner | |
John George Shearer (9 August 1859 – 27 March 1925 (aged 65)) was a Presbyterian minister and social reformer who became one of the most prominent moral-reform advocates in early twentieth-century Canada, serving as general secretary of both the Dominion Lord's Day Alliance and the Social Service Council of Canada.[1]
Early life and education
Shearer was born on 9 August 1859 on a farm near Bright in Oxford County, Upper Canada, the son of Scottish settlers John Shearer and Margaret Shearer.[1] The area was known for its evangelical Presbyterian character. He received his early schooling in Ratho and went on to high school in Weston (now part of Toronto) and the collegiate institute in Brantford.[1]
He initially worked as a teacher, then experienced a religious conversion in 1883 and turned toward the Presbyterian ministry. He began preaching in Onondaga, near Brantford, and undertook missionary work in Fort William and Toronto while pursuing studies at Knox College.[1] That missionary period in Fort William — in the community that would become part of Thunder Bay — brought him face to face with urban poverty and vice that would shape his reform agenda for decades. He completed his degree at Knox College in 1888 and was ordained on 5 June 1888, subsequently earning a BA from the University of Toronto in 1889.[1]
Ministry and early reform work
After ordination Shearer served a parish in Caledonia, Ontario, and by 1891 had moved to Erskine Presbyterian Church in Hamilton.[1] During this period he became active in the Ontario branch of the Lord's Day Alliance, formed in 1888, which worked to enforce Sunday observance. Around 1896 he wrote The workingmen and the weekly rest day, and in 1899 the Presbyterian Church appointed him to convene its committee on sabbath observance and legislation.[1]
In 1900 he left parish ministry to become the first general secretary of the Dominion Lord's Day Alliance, based in Toronto.[1] Following Privy Council rulings that struck down Ontario's Sunday laws in 1903 and 1905, he founded the Lord's Day Advocate (1903) as a vehicle for the cause. The Alliance's principal legislative victory came with the passage of the federal Lord's Day Act in 1906, after which its energy shifted to enforcement.[1] In 1907 Knox College recognized his work with an honorary DD.[1]
National reform leadership
In 1907 the Presbyterian General Assembly asked Shearer to establish a department for social and moral concerns parallel to the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Moral Reform. He built up a standing committee on temperance and moral reforms, which was organized as the Board of Moral and Social Reform in 1908 and renamed the Board of Social Service and Evangelism in 1911.[1] His approach placed heavy emphasis on evangelical methods, sensationalist exposure of vice, and legal enforcement, distinguishing it from the sociologically oriented Methodist model led by Samuel Dwight Chown.[1]
On 31 October 1907 in Toronto, Shearer and Methodist social-service secretary Thomas Albert Moore jointly founded the interdenominational Moral and Social Reform Council of Canada, which was renamed the Social Service Council of Canada in 1913.[1] Through this body Shearer became a leading national voice on issues ranging from prostitution to censorship to temperance.
In 1912 Shearer headed the National Committee for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, lobbying Parliament for criminal-law amendments against prostitution and representing Canada in international anti-trafficking efforts linked to William Thomas Stead.[1] He also collaborated with Toronto deputy police chief William Stark and American counterpart Anthony Comstock to strengthen Criminal Code provisions against obscene publications, leading to charges against Toronto booksellers in 1911 for selling works by Richard Francis Burton, Guy de Maupassant, and Honoré de Balzac — books that police magistrate George Taylor Denison ordered destroyed and barred from Canadian entry.[1]
Social Gospel and later career
By 1912 Shearer's strict puritanism had begun to moderate toward a broader progressivism within the Social Gospel movement.[1] At a Presbyterian congress at Massey Music Hall in Toronto in June 1913, he delivered an address on "Redemption of the city," arguing for spiritual and social reclamation of urban communities devastated by industrialization. Through the Board of Social Service and Evangelism his office funded settlement houses — including St Christopher House in Toronto (1912) — and local social agencies, and investigated police conduct.[1]
In 1914 Shearer and Thomas Albert Moore organized the Social Service Congress in Ottawa; the published report, introduced by Charles William Gordon (a long-time friend and president of the Social Service Council), assigned responsibility for poor urban and rural conditions to government and big business.[1] From June 1918 Shearer served as full-time general secretary of the Social Service Council. That year he founded Social Welfare, described as Canada's first major publication in the emerging field of social work, and hired Charlotte Whitton as assistant editor and assistant secretary.[1] Whitton, who would go on to prominence as a social-work advocate and later mayor of Ottawa, called him "Mr. Greatheart" and described him as demanding but understanding.[1]
By 1919 Shearer expressed public sympathy with the United Farmers of Ontario and participants in the Winnipeg General Strike, remarking that workers had been compelled to use wrong tactics in pursuit of a correct principle — a statement that placed him at odds with more conservative Presbyterian colleagues while drawing him closer to progressive Methodist positions.[1]
Death
Shearer died on 27 March 1925 in Toronto, just months before the formation of the United Church of Canada in June 1925 — a union whose ecumenical spirit he had come to support in his later years.[1] The Presbyterian Record did not publish an obituary. His death deprived the Social Service Council of its central animating force, and the organization subsequently declined.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 Mariana Valverde and S. Craig Wilson."Mariana Valverde and S. Craig Wilson, "Shearer, John George," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15."[website].Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 15 (University of Toronto/Université Laval).2005.University of Toronto/Université Laval.Link.(Rights: copyrighted | Access: open)
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