HANSON, RUPERT DOUGLAS (1868-1936)

HANSON, RUPERT DOUGLAS, principal of the Chatham Grammar School, 1907-09; b. Bocabec, Charlotte Co., N.B., 1868, s/o Richard Burpee Hanson and Hannah Mann; m. 1892, Augusta Price, of Petitcodiac, N.B.; d. Fredericton, 30 Oct 1936.

Rupert D. Hanson was a brother of the New Brunswick politician Richard B. Hanson, who was head of the Conservative Party of Canada in the early 1940s, and his wife, Augusta Price, was a sister of Dr Otto B. Price, a Conservative MLA and MP for Moncton.

Hanson was educated at St Andrews schools and the University of New Brunswick (BA 1889) and entered the field of education. His earlier teaching and administrative experience was acquired in the high schools at Petitcodiac, Sussex, and Bathurst. While he serving as principal at Bathurst, he took the initiative in organizing a Gloucester County teachers' union. This placed him at the forefront of the teachers' union movement in the province, and when the New Brunswick Teachers' Association was founded in 1903 he was elected to the executive.

Hanson assumed the principalship of the Chatham Grammar School in 1907, as successor to Philip Cox, but after only two years in the position he was chosen to succeed David L. Mitchell as inspector of schools for York, Sunbury, and Queens counties. He retained the inspectorate until 1920. He then became secretary of the Fredericton School Board and the first superintendent of schools for that city. He was still in office at the time of his death, at age sixty-eight. He and his wife had one son, John L. Hanson, a graduate of the University of New Brunswick who died in action in World War I.