Leonard Jones

Leonard C. Jones (June 4, 1924 - June 23, 1998) was a Canadian politician, who served as mayor of the city of Moncton, New Brunswick between 1963 and 1974, and Member of Parliament for the constituency of Moncton between 1974 and 1979.

Jones was elected to Moncton City Council in 1957, and was voted mayor in 1963. He is best remembered for his opposition to the use of the French language in city business, requiring all council meetings to be conducted exclusively in English although the city is one-third francophone. This frequently put him at odds with New Brunswick Premier Louis Robichaud, who was concurrently adopting legislation recognizing the equality of the French language within the province. After Robichaud opened the Université de Moncton, a French-language university, in the city in 1964, Jones quickly became a target for frequent protests by students at the new school. The most publicized incident was in 1968, when two students delivered a severed pig head to Jones' house.

With linguistic tensions high on both sides during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jones remained popular with the anglophone majority in Moncton, and he frequently decried the violent tactics of some Acadian protestors. He left the mayor's chair to run as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the 1974 federal election. After Jones won the nomination, party leader Robert Stanfield refused to sign Jones' nomination papers, citing his opposition to the party's policy of bilingualism. Jones ran instead as an independent candidate, and won with 46% of the vote. He decided not to run for a second term.

Jones died in 1998.

Sources

# "Louis J. Robichaud: A Not So Quiet Revolution" by Michel Cormier, translated by Jonathan Kaplansky. Faye Editions, 2004.
# [http://www.languagefairness.ca/docs/news_bigot.htm Speech to the Alliance for the Preservation of English in Canada, 1978]