Rowe was born in Hull, Iowa of Canadian parents in 1894. He moved to Ontario with his family at the age of two and grew up to become a farmer and cattle breeder. In 1917, he married Treva Alda Lillian Lennox. Together they had four children, one of which died during labour.
Politics
He was reeve of the township of West Gwillimbury from 1919 to 1923. Rowe served as a Member of Provincial Parliament from 1923 to 1925, and was then elected to the House of Commons, where he served until 1935. From 1936 to 1938, he was leader of Conservative Party of Ontario though, as he did not have a seat in the legislature George S. Henry remained Leader of the Opposition. In the public mind, the cause of labour was identified with the AmericanCongress of Industrial Organizations and communism. During the 1937 provincial election when LiberalpremierMitchell Hepburn was railing against the C.I.O's attempt to unionize General Motors and the supposed threat posed by organized labour, Rowe refused to take a stand against the C.I.O. and repeatedly asserted that: "the issue was not law and order but the right of free association." At the time the Conservatives were strongly associated with the Orange Order which had long held a pro-labour position. Rowe's stance resulted in George A. Drew breaking with the party in order to run as an "Independent Conservative" in the 1937 election in opposition to Rowe's position. Rowe failed to win his seat in the 1937 provincial election and successfully ran in a by-election held in November 1937 to regain the seat in the federal House of Commons he had resigned from two months earlier to run in the provincial election. He was succeeded as leader by former rival Drew. Drew went on to serve as Premier of Ontario in the 1940s before moving to federal politics. Rowe served in the House of Commons until 1962. On two occasions when George Drew, who had by this point become federal PC leader, was unable to perform his duties due to ill health, Rowe served as acting leader of the official opposition. From 1958 to 1962, he and his daughter, Jean Casselman Wadds, were the only father and daughter to ever sit together in Parliament.
