Karl Kenneth Homuth

Who was Karl Kenneth Homuth?

Karl Kenneth Homuth was an Ontario manufacturer and political figure.

He was born in Preston, Ontario, the son of Otto Homuth and Charlotte McDowell, and was educated there and in Galt. He joined George Pattinson's textile manufacturing company in 1910. In 1917, he left that firm to work in his father's company, taking over its operation in 1928 after his father's death. In 1914, he married Minnie A. Rahn. Homuth served on the town council for Preston from 1917 to 1919. He died of complications of lung cancer in his Ottawa home on March 15, 1951.

Homuth's father was a Liberal and Karl defied him by running as a Labour candidate in the 1919 provincial election, was elected as the Member for Waterloo South and supported the United Farmers of Ontario-Labour government of E.C. Drury. He was one of the few Labour MLAs who survived the 1923 provincial election that routed Drury's government and was the only Labour MLA returned in the 1926 provincial election in which he broke with his colleagues in what by then was known as the Progressive Party over the issue of temperance.