John George Shearer

Shearer, John George

John George Shearer, Presbyterian minister, social reformer (b at Bright, Canada W 9 Aug 1859; d at Toronto 27 Mar 1925). Shearer left parish work in 1900 to become secretary of the LORD'S DAY ALLIANCE, editor of the Lord's Day Advocate and architect of the Lord's Day Act introduced in 1906. In 1907 he became the permanent secretary of the new Committee on Temperance and Other Moral Reforms (organized in 1909 as the Board of Temperance and Reform and renamed in 1911 the Board of Social Service and Evangelism) of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. From 1918 until his death he was full-time secretary of the Social Service Council of Canada, which he helped to establish. For his speeches and articles against unsafe housing and working conditions, abuse of women and children, alcoholism, venereal disease, prostitution and political corruption, Shearer was called the mouthpiece of the social conscience of Canadian Christianity.