Mr. McQuesten began his climb in the Liberal Party of Ontario. In the early 1920s, he was an executive of the Hamilton Liberal Association and by the early 1930s he rose to provincial president. Finally, in 1934, he was elected as an MLA (later styled MPP) for Hamilton (the Legislative Assembly site says the riding was Hamilton Wentworth, but other sources say Hamilton West).

The newly elected MLA entered the provincial cabinet, serving concurrently as minister of highways (a position he held until 1943) and minister of public works. Among the many construction projects he spearheaded across Ontario were:

• the Queen Elizabeth Way and the Burlington Bay Skyway Bridge linking Toronto, Ontario with Fort Erie

• the Niagara Parkway along the Niagara River and the Rainbow Bridge over it in Niagara Falls

• the Blue Water Bridge in Sarnia

• the Highway 20 link to the Niagara Escarpment in Stoney Creek.

Due in part to the start Second World War, Liberal Premier Mitchell Hepburn decided to keep the legislature and its second term government going longer than was popular. McQuesten participated in this strategy, adding a shifting number of portfolios to highways: mines (1940, 1942-43), municipal affairs (1940-43), and public works again (1942-43).

McQuesten did not stand for re-election in 1943 and the Liberal Party was defeated by the Conservatives, banished from government until David Peterson became premier in 1985. His government appointments, however, continued after he left elected office.

Appointed politics

Throughout his life, McQuesten was able to parlay electoral success into permanent appointments to non-partisan agencies. This suited his technocratic (and sometimes autocratic) nature, allowing him to focus on necessary and useful but rarely politically interesting or rewarding activities.

For instance, his advocacy for parks on Hamilton City Council earned him an appointment to the permanent position on the Board of Parks Management in 1922, where he remained until his death in 1948. In this position, he supported the construction of the Rock Gardens at the Royal Botanical Gardens in the 1920s and 1930s. After his retirement from electoral politics, McQuesten resumed his interest in the RBG and became and executive member of that organization, active there until almost before he died.

Among the many Hamilton civic leaders and boosters, McQuesten helped encourage McMaster University to relocate from downtown Toronto to the west Hamilton in 1930. His motivations may have included the fact he had to move himself to attend university and that while there he lost the Rhodes Scholarship to a fulltime Toronto resident in what was regarded as a slight against Hamilton.

After being elected an MLA in 1934, he served for a decade as the appointed chairman of the Niagara Parks Commission. Fort George at Niagara-on-the-Lake was rebuilt during his tenure.

He used his role as transportation minister to secure appointment as chairman of the Canada-U.S. Niagara Falls Bridge Commission in 1939. In addition to the more usual transportation aspects of the job, he used his position to engage in petty rivalry with wartime Prime Minister of Canada and fellow Liberal Mackenzie King over an inscription on carillon bells.

Death and tributes

In his last year of life, McQuesten suffered from intestinal cancer which had metastasized to his throat and he died on January 13, 1948. Shortly before dying, he was named Hamilton's Citizen of the Year.

After his death, the Hamilton High Level Bridge was renamed Thomas B. McQuesten High Level Bridge. The structure was planned and built in the 1920s and '30s by the parks board when he was most active on it. It spans the channel linking Cootes Paradise and the Desjardins Canal to Hamilton Harbour.

His historic downtown family home was willed to the City of Hamilton after the death of the last of his five unmarried siblings in 1968. After its restoration was complete in 1971, Whitehern has been open as a civic museum and has occasionally served as a period film location.  (Source - Wikipedia)