Alexander Bell Patterson

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Alexander Bell Patterson
Acting Leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada
In office 1967–1968
Preceded by	Robert N. Thompson
Succeeded by	Réal Caouette
Member of Parliament for Fraser Valley East
In office October 30, 1972 – September 3, 1984
Preceded by	Jerry Pringle
Succeeded by	Ross Belsher
Member of Parliament for Fraser Valley
In office June 18, 1962 – June 24, 1968
Preceded by	William Harold Hicks
Succeeded by	Riding dissolved
In office August 10, 1953 – March 30, 1958
Preceded by	George Cruickshank
Succeeded by	William Harold Hicks
Personal details
Born	Alexander Bell Patterson (1911-04-22)April 22, 1911 Raymore, Saskatchewan, Canada
Died	April 2, 1993(1993-04-02) (aged 81) Abbotsford, British Columbia
Political party	Social Credit Party of Canada (until 1971), Progressive Conservative (from 1972)
Spouse(s)	Charlotte Nice
Children	4
Profession	clergyman

Alexander Bell (A.B.) Patterson (April 22, 1911 – April 2, 1993) was a long time Canadian Member of Parliament (MP) and was briefly leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada.

He was the son of an Irish father and Scottish mother who immigrated to Canada in 1901. He grew up on the family's farm until moving to Portage la Prairie to work in a grocery store. Later he attended the Salvation Army Leadership Training School in Toronto. In 1938, he married Charlotte Nice, a Salvation Army officer from Neepawa, Manitoba. They raised four children.

From 1935 until 1953, he led churches in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. In 1953, while monister of the Church of the Nazarene in Abbotsford, British Columbia, he was elected to House of Commons of Canada in the 1953 election from the riding of Fraser Valley, British Columbia. He was defeated in the 1958 election. He ran for the party leadership at the 1961 Social Credit leadership convention but withdrew before the first ballot.

Patterson returned to Parliament in 1962. He became acting leader of the Social Credit Party in 1967 when leader Robert N. Thompson resigned citing the party's lack of financial support from its BC and Alberta wings. Once the writs were dropped for the 1968 election, Thompson sought and won the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada nomination in his riding. Bud Olson had left the party a few months before joining the Liberal Party of Canada, leaving Patterson as the acting leader of the remaining three-person Social Credit caucus into the 1968 election in which all three MPs were defeated, including Patterson in Fraser Valley East.

Patterson returned to Parliament in the 1972 election representing Fraser Valley East as a Progressive Conservative, and was subsequently re-elected as a Tory until his retirement from politics in 1984.

External links[]

• Alexander Bell Patterson – Parliament of Canada biography