What They're Looking For
City: Thunder Bay
Study Year: Grade 12
Grades: 80 - 100%
About Scholarship
Clarence Decatur Howe was born in 1886 in Waltham, Massachusetts. In 1907 he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and became Professor of Civil Engineering at Dalhousie University. In 1913 he was appointed ChiefEngineer of the newly formed Board of Grain Commissioners, located in Fort William, Ontario. In the same year Mr. Howe became a Canadian citizen. In 1916 he established the C.D. Howe Company, with its head office in Port Arthur, Ontario. The company soon achieved a worldwide reputation as a designer and builder of grain handling facilities. In 1935, Mr. Howe was elected to Parliament for the constituency of Port Arthur. He was to be a Member of Parliament for almost twenty-two years.
Mr. Howe held major portfolios as Minister in the Canadian Government: Transport, Munitions and Supply, Reconstruction and Supply, and Trade and Commerce. While in all of these portfolios he served with great distinction, his most notable contribution was during the war years. As Minister of Munitions and Supply he organized and directed a massive program for the production of the equipment and materials required by Canada's Armed Forces. So successful was this program that it was said of Mr. Howe that the man matched the moment of his country's need. It badly needed the specialized leadership Mr. Howe could provide. As a consequence of this program Canada entered the postwar period with a strong and well diversified industrial economy. As Minister of Reconstruction and Supply, Mr. Howe's policies contributed greatly to Canada's economic growth; so much so that he has been aptly described as the architect of modern Canada.
The C.D. Howe Memorial Foundation was founded in 1962 to provide a fitting and lasting memorial to Rt. Hon. C.D. Howe and, for many years, funded a scholarship program which would be available to young women and men residing in the area with which Mr. Howe had such a close association for over forty years. In 2012, the Foundation established the C.D. Howe Scholarship Endowment Fund at Universities Canada to fund the Thunder Bay /Port Arthur Scholarship Program in perpetuity.
The objective of this program is to assist students from Thunder Bay and C.D. Howe's former constituency of Port Arthur to pursue an undergraduate degree in any field at a Canadian university. The Thunder Bay area includes the following school boards: Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board and the Superior North Catholic District School Board. The former constituency of Port Arthur includes the following school boards: Lakehead District School Board, Superior Greenstone District School Board and the Conseil scolaire de district catholique des Aurores boréales.