John Edward Brownlee Sex Scandal - Legacy

Legacy

For John Brownlee's political career, Ives' ruling and the subsequent appeals were irrelevant: once the jury's finding came down, he immediately announced that he would resign as soon as a replacement could be found. On July 10, 1934, he was succeeded as Premier by Richard Gavin Reid, his government's Treasurer and Minister of Health and Municipal Affairs. Brownlee stayed on as MLA and sought to retain his Ponoka seat in the 1935 provincial election, but was trounced by Edith Rogers of William Aberhart's Alberta Social Credit League. Not a single UFA member won re-election as Aberhart's movement and its promises of innovative solutions to the western world's economic problems rode to a decisive victory. In evaluating Social Credit's victory, historians unanimously cite the province's dire economic straits as the main factor, though University of Alberta historian David Elliott has acknowledged that "Aberhart and his cause were also helped" by the seduction scandal. This view has been endorsed by University of Western Ontario sociologist Edward Bell. John Barr, in his history of the Alberta Social Credit Party, is more dismissive, calling it "unlikely" that the scandal was a major factor in the UFA's defeat.

Brode acknowledges that the question of whether Brownlee seduced MacMillan "defies any definitive answer" but says that the evidence presented in the trial did not justify a finding that he did, and speculates that if MacMillan had brought her suit in a later generation she would have been "laughed out of court". Lakeland College historian and Brownlee biographer Franklin Foster does not take a position on whether or not Brownlee was guilty of seduction, but hints that a likely truth might lie "between the two extremes" of the parties' claims: that Brownlee and MacMillan did have a consensual affair which was then highjacked and exploited by the premier's more opportunistic and vengeful opponents. He leaves little doubt that he considers the behaviour of the Edmonton Bulletin and of the Liberal Party, especially its leader, William R. Howson, to have been profoundly unethical. Athabasca University historian Alvin Finkel has criticized Foster for being too friendly towards Brownlee, saying that he does not consider the scandal sufficiently from MacMillan's perspective.

A play at the 2008 Edmonton International Fringe Festival, Respecting the Action for Seduction: The Brownlee Affair, was based on the scandal, and received average to above average reviews.

After leaving office, John Brownlee returned to the practice of law. He died in 1961. Vivian MacMillan stayed out of the limelight. She did not marry Caldwell, and returned to Edson, where on August 7, 1935, she wed confectioner Henry Sorenson. Following her husband's death, she became the bookkeeper for a Calgary construction company. After an affair, she married her boss, Frank Howie, in 1955. Vivian Howie died in 1980.