Lester Bowles Pearson was a Canadian professor, historian, civil servant, statesman, diplomat, and politician, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for organizing the United Nations Emergency Force to resolve the Suez Canal Crisis. He was the 14th Prime Minister of Canada, 8th President of the United Nations General Assembly. Pearson is generally considered among the most influential Canadians of the 20th century.
Background
Born in Toronto of Irish stock on both sides of his family, he received a balanced education in politics, learning the conservative position from his father Edwin Arthur Pearson, a Methodist (later United Church of Canada) minister, and the liberal from his mother Annie Sarah (née Bowles).
Education
Pearson entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1913 at the age of sixteen.
He graduated the University of Toronto in 1919,
Pearson won a two-year fellowship and enrolled at Oxford University. There he excelled not only in his chosen field of history where he received the bachelor and master degrees, but also in athletics where he won his blues in lacrosse and ice hockey.St John's College at the University of Oxford.
Career
Too young to enlist as a private when Canada declared war in 1914, he volunteered to serve with a hospital unit sponsored by the University. After two years in England, Egypt, and Greece, he was commissioned and transferred eventually to the Royal Flying Corps, but, sustaining some injuries from two accidents, one of them a plane crash, he was invalided home. He served as a training instructor for the rest of the war, meanwhile continuing his studies at the University. He received his degree in 1919 and then worked for two years for Armour and Company, a meat processing firm; years later he said, with the wit for which he is renowned, that the Russians were claiming he had once worked for an armament manufacturer.
Pearson moved forward rapidly. From 1935 to 1941 he served in the office of the High Commissioner for Canada in London; in May, 1941, he was appointed assistant undersecretary of state for External Affairs at Ottawa; in June, 1942, named minister-counselor at the Canadian Legation in Washington; in July, 1944, promoted to the rank of minister plenipotentiary and in January, 1945, to the rank of ambassador. Pearson participated in the establishment of the UN.
As Prime Minister, Pearson pursued a bipartisan foreign policy based on a philosophy of internationalism. In domestic policy he implemented social programs in the field of old age pensions, medical care, war on poverty, education.
Religion
Orientation - Mainline[Calvinist]
Politics
He is learned the conservative position from his father, a Methodist minister, and the liberal from his mother.