George Le Marquand was born in the Jersey Channel Islands in 1905. He moved to Canada to work as a clerk in a relatives store in 1921. In 1926 he homesteaded in the Thorhild district and served as councilor and reeve of the MD, as well as a member of the school board.
He served with the Canadian Forestry Corps during the Second World War.
In 1949 George sold the homestead, moving to the VLA settlement in the Tangent-Wanham area. It wasn’t long before he was secretary-treasurer of the project’s Veteran League. In the post he led an intense and times single-handed campaign to get assistance for his fellow vets who were plagued by poor crops and what he felt was an unfair land-payment arrangement. He wrote and personally visited cabinet ministers. The ministers in turn visited him at his farm three consecutive harvest seasons. In the end the farmers got their assistance – more of it in fact than George had asked for. But he didn’t take any. Instead he joined the Painter’s Union and went to work during the winter.
George was known for his letters to the editor and advertisements in the Herald Tribune where he attacked the Social Credit government at every turn, basically on agriculture and resource development policies.
George passed in 1972 in Edmonton, Ab. and is interred at Emerson Trail Cemetery.
Sources: SPRA D.H.T. Alphabetical Files “Le”