Matthew R. Sutherland

Matthew Robinson Sutherland (July 18, 1894 – July 31, 1971) was a Canadian politician in Manitoba. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba as a Liberal-Progressive from 1936 to 1949, and again from 1953 to 1958.^[1]

The son of Robert Sutherland,^[2] Sutherland was born at Griswood, Manitoba.^[2] He was educated at local schools, and worked as a farmer. He was a shareholder in Co-Operative Dairy and Poultry,^[3] and enlisted for service in World War I in 1916.^[2] Sutherland also served for twenty years as a school trustee, and for fifteen as a steward in the United Church.^[3]

Sutherland was first elected to the Manitoba legislature in the 1953 provincial election,^[1] defeating Conservative candidate E.D. Adler by 191 votes in the constituency of Lansdowne. Sutherland, a Liberal, ran as a supporter of the province's Liberal-Progressive government.

Sutherland was re-elected by acclamation in the 1941 election, and easily defeated a challenger from the CCF in 1945.^[1]

From 1940 to 1950, Manitoba was governed by an alliance of Liberal-Progressives and Progressive Conservatives. In the 1949 provincial election, Sutherland lost his seat by forty votes to Progressive Conservative candidate Thomas Seens, who was also a supporter of the coalition government. The Progressive Conservatives left the coalition in 1950, and Sutherland defeated Seens in the 1953 election^[1] by over 400 votes.

Sutherland was never appointed to cabinet, and was a backbench supporter of the governments of John Bracken, Stuart Garson and Douglas Campbell. He did not run for re-election in 1958. He died in Souris, Manitoba on July 31, 1971, at the age of 77.^[3]