Arthur Meighen house fails to sell
Auction was held Oct 29.
Tristan Hopper, NATIONAL POST
Former prime minister Arthur Meighen’s statue was deemed too ugly for Parliament Hill, his portrait was nailed up in the House of Commons without a dedication ceremony and now nobody seems to want to buy his childhood home.
In a Saturday auction, the three-bedroom house in Anderson, 40 kilometres north of London, Ont., failed to attract any bid higher than $372,000 — well below the reserve.
“We had a lot of people going through the house, but when push came to shove bidders just didn’t come through,” said Brent Shackleton, the home’s auctioneer. “To be honest, it was simply a lot of curious people.”
Meighen’s old school in nearby St. Mary’s, Ont., also did not sell after going under the gavel last week.
Canada’s ninth prime minister lived in the former farmhouse for the first 12 years of his life.
“When we bought the house we didn’t even know he was the Prime Minister of Canada,” says owner Fred Lewis, who purchased the house in 1985 with his wife Joanne.
“My wife just saw it and fell in love with it.”
After she died in 2009, he decided to sell.
The 1840s-era fieldstone house, which has a library and a detached carriage house, is located on 3.3 acres of herb gardens and orchards. It was badly in need of repairs when they moved in, but Mr. Lewis carefully restored the property to his wife’s specifications.
“I can’t just give the house away,” he said.
“Money’s not the most important thing in the world, but I worked so hard and spent a fortune.”
Nevertheless, “99.9% of people” who toured the house had no intention of buying it, he said. “It was something to do on a Saturday.”
The first prime minister born after Confederation, Meighen had only two brief stints in high office — 15 months in 1920-21 and three months in 1926. He attempted a comeback by running as a Conservative in Toronto in 1942, but was handily beaten by a Co-operative Commonwealth Federation candidate.
Although dubbed one of the greatest debaters to serve in the House of Commons, Meighen’s slim political, record has afforded him few of the usual accolades given to former prime ministers. Books and essays on him are comparatively sparse.
In 1968, federally commissioned sculptors crafted a highly stylized statue of Meighen, but it was ultimately stashed in an Ottawa warehouse out of fear its grotesque appearance would be seen as a criticism of the Conservative leader. In the 1980s, the sculpture was quietly moved to a small park in St. Mary’s.
Meighen’s official House of Commons portrait was scheduled for an official unveiling in the late 1940s, but was cancelled when then-prime Minister Louis St. Laurent called in sick.
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