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It鈥檚 hard to imagine a man more miscast for his moment聽than Richard Bedford Bennett. An out-of-touch millionaire charged with running Canada during the Great Depression, his government was a caricature of the wealthy ruling class at a time when the wealthy ruling class wasn鈥檛 exactly held in high regard.

Born in the Maritimes, Bennett trained as a lawyer in the east before moving west to seek employment in the newly-created province of Alberta. He picked up a number of high-profile corporate clients and became a savvy investor,聽growing very wealthy in the process. Having made his fortune, he turned to politics, helping found the Conservative Party of Alberta聽and serving as its first leader in the provincial legislature in the early 1900s.

Elected to the House of Commons in 1911, Bennett served briefly in the cabinet of Prime Minister Arthur Meighen (1874-1960). He won the leadership of the federal Conservative Party in 1927, vowing his聽business background would make聽him the ideal leader for the party of business. As the Depression dawned, he successfully unseated Prime Minister Mackenzie King (1874-1950) in the 1930 election, arguing the Liberal Party鈥檚 economic incompetence was responsible for the country鈥檚 woes.

Yet once in office聽Prime Minister Bennett offered few solutions. Skeptical of聽government intervention in the economy, he instead聽offered his citizens moralizing lectures about working hard and saving money,聽and聽was quickly demonized for failing to understand the sheer magnitude of the crisis. As his first term came to a close,聽he had an abrupt (and politically convenient) change of heart, and promised to bring to Canada聽some of the popular 鈥�New Deal鈥� welfare state reforms of聽President Franklin Roosevelt (1882-1945) in the United States 鈥� but only if he was reelected.

He was not. Bennett lost his bid for re-election in a landslide and Mackenzie King was returned to power in 1935. Bitter over the country that rejected him, Bennett emigrated to England where he became a member of the House of Lords, living a plush聽exile until his death.