Article

John Angus MacLean

Published Online February 18, 2008

Last Edited December 16, 2013

John Angus MacLean, farmer, politician, premier of PEI 1979-81 (b at Lewes, PEI 15 May 1914). After serving in WWII, MacLean returned to PEI and contested unsuccessfully the federal elections of 1945 and 1948.

MacLean, John Angus

John Angus MacLean, farmer, politician, premier of PEI 1979-81 (b at Lewes, PEI 15 May 1914). After serving in WWII, MacLean returned to PEI and contested unsuccessfully the federal elections of 1945 and 1948. First elected in 1951, he served for more than 2 decades as MP for Queens County, then left federal politics to lead the provincial Conservatives to victory in 1979. Stressing the virtues of rural community life, his government banned new shopping malls and cancelled participation in New Brunswick's Point Lepreau nuclear reactor project. MacLean resigned as premier on 17 November 1981 and vacated his seat immediately prior to the 1982 election. He retired to private life on a family farm. In 1991, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and in 1998 published his memoirs, Making It Home.