William Lyon Mackenzie King (December 17, 1874 – July 22, 1950) was a Canadian statesman and politician who served as the tenth prime minister of Canada for three non-consecutive terms from 1921 to 1926, 1926 to 1930, and 1935 to 1948. A Liberal, he was the dominant politician in Canada from the early 1920s to the late 1940s. King is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Great Depression and the Second World War. He played a major role in laying the foundations of the Canadian welfare state and established Canada's international reputation as a middle power fully committed to world order. With a total of 21 years and 154 days in office, he remains the longest-serving prime minister in Canadian history. Born in Berlin, Ontario (now Kitchener), King studied law and political economy in the 1890s and became concerned with issues of social welfare. He later obtained a PhD – the only Canadian prime minister to have done so. In 1900, he became deputy minister of the Canadian government's new Department of Labour. He entered the House of Commons in 1908 before becoming the federal minister of labour in 1909, serving under Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier. After losing his seat in the 1911 federal election, King worked for the Rockefeller Foundation before briefly working as an industrial consultant. Following the death of Laurier in 1919, King acceded to the leadership of the Liberal Party and won a by-election to re-enter the Commons shortly after. Taking the helm of a party bitterly torn apart during the First World War due to the Conscription Crisis of 1917, he unified both the pro-conscription and anti-conscription factions of the party, leading it to victory in the 1921 federal election. King established a post-war agenda that lowered wartime taxes, moderately reduced tariffs, and developed the national capital, Ottawa. He strengthened Canadian autonomy by refusing to support Britain in the Chanak Crisis without Parliament's consent and negotiating the Halibut Treaty (which managed depleting halibut stocks) with the United States without British interference. In the 1925 election, the Conservatives won a plurality of seats, but the Liberals negotiated support from the agrarian Progressive Party and stayed in office as a minority government. In 1926, facing a Commons vote that could force his government to resign, King asked Governor General Lord Byng to dissolve parliament and call an election. Byng refused and instead invited the