Page "John Queen" Paragraph 1

A cooper by trade, Queen arrived in Canada in 1906 with his younger brother William, moving into a rooming house at 259 Dorothy St., a stone's throw from the massive Canadian Pacific Railway yards where many working-class Scottish and English immigrants were then employed.

On June 25, 1908, Queen married Katherine Ross, who had herself emigrated from Scotland in 1907.

By 1911 the family, which by then included a son John and a daughter Gloria ( later Gloria Queen-Hughes, a prominent feminist and mayoral candidate ), were living in the working-class neighbourhood of Weston.

Queen soon became involved in the radical politics of Winnipeg.

He joined the Social Democratic Party of Canada in 1908, as the group was breaking away from the more doctrinaire Socialist Party of Canada.

Queen's own variety of socialism was undogmatic, and was strongly influenced by the reform liberalism of John Stuart Mill.