Editor, civil servant, municipal official.
Born at Cardiff, Wales on 9 April 1885, son of Horatio Hooper and Vanda Spiridion, he came to Canada in 1908 and attended Queen's University before moving to Ottawa, Ontario where he worked as an engineer in the Department of Railway and Canals and later as an editor of the Labour Gazette for several years.
A recognized expert on the subject of Proportional Representation (PR), according to his own account, he was contacted in January 1920 by Manitoba Premier Tobias Crawford Norris and his Attorney-General Thomas Herman Johnson on the expected outcome if Single Transferable Voting, a form of PR, was adopted in Winnipeg for provincial elections. He reassured them that it would merely give each party its due share of seats, and they proceeded to bring it in. He also gave evidence in support of PR and electoral reform to the 1936 House of Commons, Special Committee on Elections and Franchise Acts.
In 1923, he moved to St. James where he was Associate Editor of the Winnipeg Tribune for 17 years, after which he was an industrial disputes conciliator for the federal Department of Labour until retirement in 1955. Active in municipal affairs, he was Reeve of Rural Municipality of St. James (1933-1937), Chairman of the St. James School Board, and Chairman of the St. James Airport Commission. He and wife Elizabeth Emma Clarke (1884-1980) had two children: Grace Hooper (?-?, wife of W. Keith Elliott) and Ronald H. C. Hooper (1920-2005).
He moved to Richmond, British Columbia in 1967 and died there on 8 February 1969.
Death registration, Manitoba Vital Statistics.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 10 February 1969, page 23.
Obituary [Elizabeth Emma Hooper], Winnipeg Free Press, 14 October 1980, page 74.
Obituary [Ronald H. C. Hooper], Winnipeg Free Press, 21 April 2005.
We thank Tom Monto for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 10 June 2026
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