As Premier during two terms, Flemming modernized the province's hydro system, built the Beechwood Dam, then the largest hydro-electric project in the province, and presented a balanced budget every year in office.[citation needed]
Universal health care, which had been proposed formally by the St. Laurent government at the 1955 federal-provincial summit on taxation, would become his nemesis because of his reluctance to sink the budget of the province.[1]
In 1960 his government was defeated because of the hospital tax, which had been set by his government at $50 per capita and which the Liberals promised to abolish while maintaining a balanced budget, and the Liberal promises to reform alcohol sales, and to revive the moose hunt.[2]
Flemming's son, Hugh John Flemming, Jr. ran for a seat in the New Brunswick Legislature in 1974 but lost to Shirley Dysart by 73 votes. His grandson Ted Flemming was elected to the provincial legislature in the 2012 Rothesay by-election and served as New Brunswick's minister of health from 2012 to 2014.
Flemming's family-run lumber mill in the village of Juniper, New Brunswick ran into financial difficulties in the late 1970s, but his friend Harrison McCain, organized an investment campaign that raised sufficient capital from businessmen to allow the mill to make a financial recovery. The mill was sold and dismantled c 2010 and the area has been re-purposed to store production of the peat moss facility. His wife Aida was the founder of the Kindness Club, an organization to facilitate kindness toward animals geared towards children.[3]
The Hugh John Flemming Forestry Centre in Fredericton is home to the Maritime College of Forest Technology as well as several branches of the governments of New Brunswick and Canada, and the K.C. Irving Theatre.
