J. S. Ewart

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

John Skirving Ewart, QC (August 11, 1849 – February 21, 1933) was a Canadian lawyer and writer who argued for Canada’s independence. He was born in Toronto and studied at Upper Canada College and Osgoode Hall, becoming a lawyer in 1871 (QC, 1884). He worked in Toronto, Winnipeg and Ottawa and wrote many essays about Canada’s future.

Ewart strongly supported Canadian sovereignty. In 1903 he published The Kingdom of Canada, in which he argued against appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and said Canada must settle its own disputes, a power he believed Canada had given up in 1875. In 1894 he represented French and Roman Catholic Manitobans in the Supreme Court case In Re Statutes of Manitoba relating to Education, part of the Manitoba Schools Question. He died in Ottawa and is buried at Beechwood Cemetery.