Neil McLeod (politician)
Neil McLeod was a Prince Edward Island lawyer, judge and politician, the fifth premier. He was born at Uigg on the island to Roderick McLeod and Flora McDonald, Scottish immigrants. He was educated in Uigg and in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, articled in law at Charlottetown and was called to the bar in 1873. McLeod entered politics in 1879 winning a seat in the provincial legislature as a Conservative. He was re-elected in 1882 and became secretary-treasurer and then minister without portfolio in the government of William Wilfred Sullivan. In 1889, Sullivan resigned to become Chief Justice of the province's Supreme Court and McLeod became party leader and Premier. His government was defeated after a series of by-election losses led to it losing a Motion of No Confidence in 1891. From 1891 to 1893, he became Leader of the Opposition in the House of Assembly. His dialectics engaged Liberal criticism of Conservative deficits, metropolitics, and real estate transactions with proposals for progressive "amalgamation" of the lower house and Legislative Council. This opposition inaugurated a critical period in Prince Edward Island history, as Islander partisans narrated and contested origins for the idea of legislative "amalgamation." These debates adumbrated the fall and rise of competing notions of unicameralism across Island publics and, ultimately, a Legislative Assembly. McLeod retired from politics and was appointed a county court judge in 1893. He died at Summerside in 1915.
According to his 1915 Summerside obituary, "besides an extremely wide circle of friends and admirers there are left to mourn, a widow, one son, Arthur, now in Florida, and six daughters, all of whom reside in the West, excepting Miss Marie, who was one of the nurses at the front in France and is now home on leave of absence." Summerside newspapers continued to report on the whereabouts of his children, particularly after the "marriage in California of Mary Rogers McLeod, daughter of the late Judge McLeod, to John Cecil Holmes of Victoria, B.C."
