James Garfield Gardiner

James Garfield Gardiner was a Canadian farmer, educator and politician who served as the fourth premier of Saskatchewan and later as Canada's federal Minister of Agriculture from 1935 to 1957, the longest tenure of anyone to hold that post. As premier from 1926 to 1929 and again from 1934 to 1935, he championed the Saskatchewan Sanitoria and Hospitals Act, the first legislation in North America to provide free hospitalization and treatment for tuberculosis victims. His more than two decades as federal agriculture minister spanned the Great Depression, the Second World War and the postwar years, a period in which he shaped national policy toward prairie farmers through droughts, war mobilization and the beginnings of postwar agricultural modernization.