Francis Alvin George Hamilton, a former federal agriculture minister who gave Brian Mulroney an early break in politics, has died at age 92.

He passed away at his home in Manotick, Ont., on Wednesday.

"The farmers of this country will always remember him as a spectacularly successful minister," then-Liberal Leader John Turner said in 1987, the 30th anniversary of Hamilton's first election to Parliament.

"The only weakness in judgment he has ever shown is having hired Brian Mulroney."

That was a wry joke Turner directed partly at himself: Mulroney walloped Turner's Liberals in the 1984 federal election.

Mulroney honoured Hamilton in 1992 by awarding him the title Right Honourable. Usually the designation only goes to a prime minister, governor general or chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Hamilton is one of six Canadians in history to be granted the title even though he didn't serve in one of those posts .

Born in Kenora, Ont. in 1912, Hamilton grew up in Saskatchewan, graduating from the University of Saskatchewan in 1937 with a BA. Fifty-two years later, his alma mater granted him an honorary doctorate.

He worked as a teacher and served in the Second World War as a flight lieutenant with the Royal Canadian Air Force, earning the Burma Star designation.

Hamilton first ran for federal office in 1945. He lost that election and the subsequent ones in 1949 and 1953.

At the same time, he became provincial Tory leader in 1949. His party lost the 1948, 1952 and 1956 elections to the NDP under Tommy Douglas.

In 1957, Hamilton was finally elected as a Progressive Conservative to the House of Commons as the MP for Qu'Appelle (later Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain).

Then-prime minister John Diefenbaker first appointed him minister of northern affairs and natural resources. From 1960 to 1963, he was minister of agriculture.

One of his major accomplishments was cultivating China as a market for Canadian wheat -- despite the opposition of the U.S. government which was against trade with China.

After the Diefenbaker government was defeated in 1963, Hamilton remained in federal politics. He unsuccessfully

The 1968 Trudeaumania wave washed him out of Parliament for a term, but he came back to represent his riding in 1972, holding it until his retirement in 1988.

He served Mulroney's government as a policy advisor.

Hamilton's funeral will be held Tuesday in Ottawa.