Wilfrid Heighington

Wilfrid Heighington (1897 - 1945) was a Canadian soldier, writer, lawyer and politician.

Heighington attended Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, leaving in 1915 to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I. He was twice wounded in and twice mentioned in dispatches. After being recuperating from serious wounds he returned to France to fight at the Somme and Vimy Ridge.

He became a lawyer following the war, was called to the bar in 1920, and was appointed King's Counsel eleven years later.

Heighington was first elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario in 1929 as the Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly for the Toronto riding of St. David's. He was re-elected in 1934 despite the province wide landslide that brought the Ontario Liberal Party to power under Mitchell Hepburn.

He was a candidate in the 1936 Conservative leadership convention placing fifth, and narrowly lost his seat in the legislature in the election held the next year. Despite being out of the legislature, Heighington ran again for the party leadership in 1938, and came in third, but with fewer votes (only 41). George Drew won the leadership on the first ballot.

Heighington was also a prolific writer authoring articles and poems for "Saturday Night", "The Star Weekly" and other periodicals, many of which were reissued in a book, "Whereas and Whatnot" (1934). In 1943, he published the war novel "The Cannon's Mouth".