Lawyer.
Born at Chesley, Ontario on 11 April 1881, son of William James Thomas and Mary Ann Robertson, brother of Charles Tracey Thomas, he came with his family to Manitoba in 1883 and settled at Deloraine. He received an Arts degree from Manitoba College in 1906 and was called to the Manitoba Bar in 1909. During the First World War, he went overseas and was wounded at The Somme. He was awarded the Military Cross at Passchendaele in 1917.
He then returned to Winnipeg and became the Crown Prosecutor for the City of St. Boniface, serving in this role until retirement in 1966, by which time he was believed to the oldest such lawyer in the British Commonwealth. He was made a Queen’s Counsel in 1957.
He was a member of Westminster United Church and the Masons (St. John’s Lodge No. 4). During the Great Depression he purchased Faloma Beach from the Hudson’s Bay Company and built Toniata Lodge, now Falcon Lake, later selling it to the provincial government. In 1970 he published a book of poetry entitled The Collected Poems of E. J. Thomas.
He died at Winnipeg on 16 August 1971 and was buried in the Brookside Cemetery.
Canadian Expeditionary Force Attestation Papers, Library and Archives Canada.
“13 new QCs are named,” Winnipeg Free Press, 31 December 1957, page 1.
“Prosecutor Thomas, 85, retires,” Winnipeg Free Press, 5 July 1966.
“Poems are gift to 1970,” Winnipeg Free Press, 6 December 1969.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 18 August 1971, page 21.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 2 December 2022
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