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(courtesy of Encyclopedia of Newfoundland & Labrador) Lawyer; politician; author. Born: Grand Bank, son of Edith Laura (Butt) and Frederick William Rowe qv. Educated: Memorial University; University of New Brunswick; Oxford University. Married: Penelope Ayre qv. Urged to enter politics by Joseph R. Smallwood after graduating from Oxford, Rowe was elected MHA for White Bay South in 1966, and in 1968 became Canada's youngest cabinet minister. He served as Minister of Housing and Minister of Community and Social Development until 1971. Resigning his seat in 1974 to write fiction in France, he returned to politics and defeated Edward Roberts qv in the 1977 Liberal leadership race. Before the next provincial election, however, he resigned as leader in favour of Don Jamieson qv. Despite criticism over his leaking to the press a confidential police report concerning former Conservative cabinet minister Thomas Farrell qv, he retained his own seat in 1979, but lost it in the 1982 provincial election. Meanwhile he had completed the novel begun in France. Clapp's Rock detailed the ill-starred bid for the premiership of a young Oxford graduate drawn to politics by a grizzled old plotter of a politician. A second novel, The Temptations of Victor Galanti, was published in 1989. In the mid-1980s Rowe became host of a popular weekday morning open-line radio show on VOCM. The show would, he hoped, furnish him with material for new novels.
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| biography of Penelope Manuel Ayre Rowe (1943 - ) |
| (courtesy of Encyclopedia of Newfoundland & Labrador)
Social policy advocate. Born: St. John's, daughter of Olga (Crosbie) and Lewis H. Ayre qv. Educated: Emerson College, Boston; University of London. Married: William N. Rowe qv. From 1965 to 1969 Rowe worked as a speech therapist with the Children's Rehabilitation Centre and in private practice. She was for some time host of the CBC afternoon shows ``Any Questions?'' and ``Open House'', and in 1968 joined the current affairs program ``Here and Now'', reporting on social issues. In 1968 and 1969 Rowe wrote for the Daily News. From 1973 to 1974 she was executive secretary with the Early Childhood Development Association, of which she was a founding member. In 1976 Rowe became executive director of the newly-formed Community Services Council of Newfoundland and Labrador qv, a position she still held in 1992. Active in various aspects of community life, Rowe was vice-president of the Liberal Party of Canada in 1973, a member of a federal panel to determine the destination of special funding for court test cases on equality rights, 1986, and in 1992 served on the federal government's prosperity initiatives steering group. |