(18 April 1889-27 Dec. 1952), deputy minister of finance. (Clifford Clark, W.C. Clark, W. Clifford Clark, Dr Clark–from an honorary degree) Born near Martintown, GC. Parents: George Ellis Clark and his 1st wife Kathleen or Catherine Urquhart. Education: the local schools, Queen’s University (M.A., 1910) and Harvard (A.M., 1915). Gertrude Wood was one of his elementary school teachers. Clark became a lecturer in the Dept. of Political and Economic Science at Queen’s in 1915. Turning to private enterprise, he worked for S.W. Strauss, an American investment firm, from 1923 till the beginning of the Depression. Clark was at Queen’s again, 1931-1932, then was appointed Canada’s deputy minister of finance in 1932, a position he held for the remainder of his life.
First appointed by a Conservative prime minister, he became one of the mainstays of the subsequent Liberal administration of Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent. Clark was a powerful influence on Canadian financial policy during the stressed and danger-filled years of the Depression, the Second World War, and the transition to peace after the war. Clark strongly supported the founding of the Bank of Canada in the 1930s, was important in the financing of the Canadian share in the war and in the imposition of Canadian wartime price controls, was important also in shaping post-war Canadian social and financial policy, encouraged the King government to establish children’s allowances, and had a long-lasting effect also on Canadian housing policy, and was one of the founders of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation. He was one of the planners whose view of the world seemed later to many to be ratified by the vast and utterly unprecedented (and by many pessimists quite unexpected) prosperity of the decades that followed the war. Clark was a Canadian pioneer in advancing the idea of the interventionist state, and was one of the most important of the Ottawa “mandarins” who established the principle of leading government measures being conceived and promoted by the elite of the civil service rather than by elected politicians. Be that good or bad, he was most undoubtedly one of the most important Glengarrians of his time. The extensive body of writings on him shows the importance he has been felt to have for Canadian history as well.
Clark died at Chicago, where he had gone to give a speech. The funeral services were in Ottawa, and he is buried at Cataraqui Cemetery, Kingston. He was married to Margaret Hilda Smith, of Martintown. (four children) He was the co-author of W.C. Clark and J.L. Kingston, The Skyscraper: a Study in the Economic Height of Modern Office Buildings (New York & Cleveland, 1930).
It is to be noted that G.S.H. Barton from just outside GC was deputy minister of agriculture for Canada from 1932 to1953–almost exactly the same period in which Clark was deputy minister of finance for Canada. Thus at a time when GC and the portion of Eastern Ontario to which it belonged were slipping into a recognized state of economic backwardness they had 2 of their sons in the higher circles of power. It may also be remarked that Clark was a protégé of O.D. Skelton, under-secretary of state for foreign affairs at Ottawa from 1925 to 1941, who had been educated in Cornwall, Ont., and had once taught there. In 1952 Queen’s University began the Skelton-Clark Fellowship to honour these Queen’s academics. In a Queen’s social connection, young Clark was the toastmaster at a banquet of Queen’s University graduates and undergraduates held at Williamstown 28 Dec. 1911 at which J. F. Macdonald spoke. (Cornwall Standard 19 Jan. 1912)
In 1935, Clark was made a companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (see life of G.S.H. Barton). In 1983 the Ministry of Finance announced the first appointment to the position, begun that year, of Clifford Clark Visiting Economist. Clark is included in The Canadian 100: the 100 Most Influential Canadians of the 20th Century.
Lives in MDict and Hurtig * Glengarry News 2 Jan. 1953 and the CP obituary of this time, obituary and tribute QAR (Jan. 1953), tribute by W.A. Mackintosh and biog. study by R.B. Bryce in The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 19:3 (Aug. 1953) * Neatby * Who’s Who in Canada 1945-1946 p. 314 * W. C. Good, Farmer Citizen (1958) 138, 149-150, favorable opinion of Clark * J.L. Granatstein, The Ottawa Men: the Civil Service Mandarins, 1935-1957 (1982) * 2 books by Robert B. Bryce have much information, some personal glimpses, Maturing in Hard Times: Canada’s Department of Finance through the Great Depression (1986) and Canada and the Cost of World War II: the International Operations of Canada’s Department of Finance 1939-1947 (2005) * Doug Owram, The Government Generation : Canadian Intellectuals and the State 1900-1945 (1986) * Barry Ferguson, Remaking Liberalism: the Intellectual Legacy of Adam Shortt, O.D. Skelton, W.C. Clark, and W.A. Mackintosh (1993) * Bernard Chevrier, “Glengarry Connection: William Clifford Clark,” GN 27 Jan. 1982 * Chevrier 88-97 (portrait) * Jack Granatstein, “Queen’s Mandarin Corps,” QAR (Nov.-Dec. 1987) * John Bacher, “W.C. Clark and the Politics of Canadian Housing Policy, 1935-1952,” Urban History Review/Revue d’histoire urbaine, 17:1 (June 1988) * Senior 302 * joins Strauss company, Cornwall Standard 22 Feb. 1923, GN 23 Feb. 1923 * deputy minister, GN 28 Oct. 1932 * further various notices in GC-area press: GN 8 May 1914 (Harvard scholarship), Standard Freeholder 6 April 1942 by Austin F. Cross (see William Denovan), repr. from Canadian Business), & SFH 12 March 1943 & 23 March 1946