But it would be unjust to speak merely of that. He possessed
other qualities that impressed me even more than that. He was
throughout his life a man of lofty and unbending principle. I
personally know that his early ending of his connection with
a great railway system, sacrificing a position to which was
attached great honor and an immense salary, and his going out of
that office, not knowing whither he went, was a wonderful example
of the triumph of principle over what appeared to be personal
interests. It stands as a proof of Mr. Hays’ unwillingness to be
the tool of a designing genius no matter what that might seem to
offer him in the way of personal remuneration. And in the great
positions he held it was his constant endeavor to be just to all.
It was his endeavor by day and his prayer by night to always
carry an even balance between the employes of his company and
those who had invested their living in it with even justice to
both. Knowledge of this permeated the whole system, and brought a
realization amongst the men that the main endeavor of the leader
was not to get out of the employes as much as possible and give
them in return as little as possible, but that they were really
working with, not for, their president, in the interests of all.
“And he was a public-spirited man in many other spheres. That
he was a generous friend of education is proven in that he
was a governor of McGill University; that he was a benefactor
to suffering humanity is shown by the hospitals of which he
was a governor. But far more than these public positions were
innumerable cases in which he proved himself a generous but
unostentatious friend to the needy. And may I for a moment draw
aside the sacred veil, and speak of his home life. As a father,
husband, brother, comrade, to all in his household he was ever
the genial, pure, high-minded Christian gentleman--the idol of
his home, as he deserved to be. His religious influence was
unmistakable and caused him inevitably to work for the right. I
am confident that his deep religious sense of duty was at the
bottom of much that we admire in his career--he was utterly
honest, not because he believed it to be the best business
policy, but because he had faith in the right; he was filled with
genial optimism, not from blindness to the facts, but because he
knew them.
“That such lives should be allowed to be interrupted by such
disasters as that we now mourn is a problem which cannot be
satisfactorily answered. It may be said that no man’s place is
impossible to be filled. But Methodism has never found another
John Wesley, and the Grand Trunk will look and wait for long
before it finds another Charles Melville Hays.”
DOUGALL CUSHING.
One of the most able, successful and progressive of the younger
generation of professional men in Montreal is Dougall Cushing,
connected with important legal interests as a member of the firm
of Barron & Cushing, notaries. He is a native son of the city,
born May 3, 1886, his parents being Charles and Lily (Macaulay)
Cushing. The family is of old American establishment, the
great-grandfather of the subject of this review, Job Cushing,
having been born in Massachusetts in 1765. The father was born in
May, 1848, and he was for a number of years the senior member of
the firm of Cushing & Barron and known as an able and reliable
notary. He was in addition a director in the Sun Life Assurance
Company, on the board of governors of the Young Men’s Christian
Association and deacon in Calvary Congregational church, a man
of wide interests, high standards and useful and important
accomplishments. His death occurred September 30, 1910. He and
his wife became the parents of seven children, R. Macaulay,
Dougall of this review, Charles, Arthur, Eric, Geoffrey and Edith.
Dougall Cushing was reared in his parents’ home and acquired
his preliminary education in the grammar and high schools of
Montreal. He afterward attended McGill University, from which
he was graduated B. A. in 1907 and B. C. L. in 1910. In the
following year he established himself as a notary in his native
city, associating himself with Robert H. Barron, his father’s
former partner. The firm of Barron & Cushing is today, as it
has been for many years past, one of the strongest of its kind
in the city, for Dougall Cushing has followed closely in his
father’s footsteps, and has proved himself brilliant, reliable
and energetic in the conduct of his professional interests.
Mr. Cushing belongs to Phi Kappa Pi, which he joined in McGill
University and is a member of the Seventeenth Regiment, Duke
of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars. He is one of the popular and
enterprising young men of Montreal and has already gained a
creditable place in a profession in which his superior merit and
ability will undoubtedly win for him ultimate distinction.
HON. SAMUEL GALE.
Hon. Samuel Gale, one of the ablest members of the legal
profession in his day, and a very prominent citizen of Montreal,
died in that city on Saturday, April 15, 1865. He was the son
of a Mr. Gale who, born in Hampshire, England, came to America
in 1770 as assistant paymaster to the forces. He married there
a Miss Wells, of Brattleboro, and soon after left the army, and
took up his residence in the colony of New York. During the
Revolution he stood firmly by the old flag under which he had
served, and was for some time imprisoned as a loyalist. After the
Revolution, he came to reside in Canada, upon an estate granted
to his wife’s father by the crown, as indemnification for the
losses brought upon him as a loyalist in the Revolution. He was
subsequently secretary to Governor Prescott, whom he accompanied
to England, and there assisted to defend him from the attacks
made upon his administration. While there he wrote an essay on
Public Credit, addressed and submitted to Pitt. The following is
the inscription on his tombstone at Farnham, in Shefford county:
“Here rests Samuel Gale, Esq., formerly acting deputy paymaster
general of H. Majesty’s forces in the Southern Provinces, now
the U. S. of America; subsequently Secretary to H. E. the
Governor-in-chief of H. M. dominions in N. A.; Author of Essays
on Public Credit, and other works; born at Kimpton Hants,
England, October 14, 1748; died at Farnham, June 27, 1826.”
Samuel Gale of this review was born at St. Augustine, East
Florida, in 1783. He was educated at Quebec, while his father was
secretary, and came to study law at Montreal under Chief Justice
Sewell, in 1802, having Chief Justice Rolland and Mr. Papineau
as fellow students. Mr. Gale was admitted to the bar in 1808,
and ere long secured a large practice. In 1815 he was appointed
a magistrate in the Indian territories, and accompanied Lord
Selkirk when he went to the northwest. Later, when Lord Dalhousie
was attacked for his Canadian administration, Mr. Gale went home
as bearer of memorials from the English-speaking Lower Canadians
in the townships and elsewhere, defending his lordship’s conduct.
In 1829, he became chairman of the quarter sessions, and in
1834 was raised to the bench to replace Mr. Justice Uniacke,
who preferred to resign the seat on the bench to which he had
just been appointed rather than come back to Montreal during the
cholera, then raging here. Judge Gale retired from the bench in
1849, forced into retirement by continued ill health and the
gradual coming on of the infirmities of old age.
[Illustration: HON. SAMUEL GALE]
He had married in 1839 a Miss Hawley, of St. Armand West, by whom
he had three daughters. Mrs. Gale died in September, 1849. Of the
daughters the only one now living is Anna R., widow of T. Sterry
Hunt, of Montreal, who is mentioned elsewhere in this work; while
of the other two, Agnes Logan married Andrew Stuart of Quebec,
a son of Chief Justice Stuart and of a very prominent family in
that city, and the third became the Baroness von Friesen, who
died December 10, 1875, in Berlin, Germany.
Born of parents who had both suffered for their loyal adherence
to the British Crown during the American Revolution, and educated
in their views Mr. Gale was, as long as he busied himself in
politics, a stanch conservative and defender of British unity and
British supremacy. He wrote a series of letters to the Montreal
Herald (in those days the organ of the stoutest conservatism)
over the signature of “Nerva” which produced a strong impression
on the public mind at that time; and in espousing the cause of
Lord Dalhousie and upholding the old constitution (under the
title constitutionalists taken by the conservatives of that day)
against the advocates of democracy or responsible government, he
was but consistently pursuing the course on which he first set
out. While upon the bench he maintained in an elaborate and very
able judgment the right of the Crown to establish martial law
here in 1837, refusing to theorize about what abstract rights man
had or ought to have, declaring simply and firmly what the law,
as he read it, established the prerogative of the sovereign to be
in a colony. Both as a lawyer and judge he won the respect of his
confreres alike by his ability and learning.
For many years previous to his death he was deeply interested in
the freedom of the slave. He could not speak with patience of
any compromise with slavery and waxed indignant in denunciation
of all who in any way aided, abetted, or even countenanced it.
When the Anderson case was before the Upper Canada courts he
was one of the most active among those who aroused agitation
here. When the Prince of Wales visited this country he got up a
congratulatory address from the colored people of Canada which,
however, was not received, as the prince was desired by the Duke
of Newcastle, not to recognize differences of race and creed
wherever it could be helped.
Judge Gale was a man of high principle and ever bore an
unblemished moral character. Once in his early career at the bar
he was forced by the then prevailing customs of society to fight
a duel. His antagonist was Sir James Stuart, who had quarreled
with him in court and Mr. Gale was severely wounded. It was an
event which, we believe, he profoundly regretted, and gladly saw
the better day dawn when men ran no risk of forfeiting their
position as gentlemen by refusing to shoot, or be shot at, in
order to redress real or fancied insults. He was a scrupulously
just man, most methodical and punctual in business matters. There
were in his writings great care, and precision and clearness of
language. In his letters, too, and even in signing his name, the
same trait was observable. He often used to condemn the stupid
custom of men who signed their names with a flourish, yet so
illegibly that no one could read, but only guess at, the word
intended. He was not ostentatious of his charities, yet they were
not lacking. Some years before his demise he made a gift of land
to Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, and during the last months of
his life, when age and illness were day by day wearing him out,
he found relief for his own distress in aiding to relieve that of
the needy and afflicted.
With him passed away one more of those men, who link the creative
past, in which were laid the foundations of our civilization,
with the bustling present and of whom the generation of today
knows naught; of men more proud and precise in their manners
than we are; and of such rectitude and sense of honor, that we
feel deeply the loss of the influence of their example. A loyal
subject, a learned and upright judge, a kind, true, steadfast
friend, was lost to the community in Judge Gale.
ROLLO CAMPBELL, M. D.
Dr. Rollo Campbell, of whom it was said that no man ever spoke
ill, was the son of Dr. Francis W. Campbell and was born in
Montreal on the 6th of June, 1864. His life record covered a
comparatively brief span. He was educated under private tutors
and in Bishop’s College, where he pursued his professional
course, being graduated from that institution at Lennoxville, P.
Q., with honors in the class of 1886, at which time the M. D.
degree was conferred upon him. His early professional experience
came to him as interne in the Western Hospital at Montreal, where
he remained for a year, gaining the wide knowledge and training
that only hospital practice can bring. He then went to Europe,
pursuing his studies in London and in Edinburgh. Upon returning
to his native land he located in Montreal for practice and it was
not long before he had established an enviable reputation as a
conscientious, capable physician of untiring energy, thoroughly
devoted to his profession and ever ready to do a kindness to
those in need of his services. He was especially interested in
surgery and his researches along that line were broad and varied.
From the time of his graduation Dr. Campbell was on the teaching
staff of Bishop’s College, first as demonstrator of anatomy,
to which he was appointed in 1897, and later as professor of
surgery. For many years he was on the consulting staff of the
Montreal Dispensary and was one of the assistant surgeons of the
Western Hospital, in which institution he was greatly interested.
He was likewise an examiner for the New York Life Insurance
Company.
A feature in his professional connections was his service as
surgeon for seventeen years of the Fifth Royal Scots of Canada,
in which regiment he was very popular. At one time he was
president of Bishop’s Medical College Graduates’ Society and he
was physician to several fraternal societies. He also belonged to
the Montreal Medico-Chirurgical Society and along more strictly
social lines he was connected with the Metropolitan Club, the
Montreal Military Institute and the Montreal Amateur Athletic
Association. Of the latter he was a life member and was captain
of the Bicycle Club of that organization.
Dr. Campbell was married in Montreal in 1892 in St. Paul’s
Presbyterian church to Miss Marion May Fletcher, a daughter of
Henry Fletcher, who for thirty years was tide surveyor of the
port of Montreal, and his wife, whose maiden name was Margaret
Ann McInnes. Dr. and Mrs. Campbell became parents of two
children: Gladys Agnes and Edith Margaret. The family circle
was broken by the hand of death when on the 31st of May, 1904,
Dr. Campbell passed away. Speaking of him at this time a fellow
graduate of Bishop’s College said: “He was a fine fellow. I
think I can safely say that I never heard anyone speak ill of
him. He was kind and thoughtful and devoted himself to his work.
In fact, I fear that he worked too hard on account of that
conscientiousness which would not allow of his neglecting any
seeming duty. He will be greatly missed, not only by his fellow
practitioners, but by all who knew him and respected him.”
ROBERT KURCZYN LOVELL.
While Robert Kurczyn Lovell entered upon a business already
established, he has displayed the enterprise and determination
which are among his salient characteristics in the methods which
he has followed in conducting his business affairs. Montreal
numbers him among her native sons, but he comes of Irish and
German ancestry. He is the eldest son of the late John Lovell,
who was a prominent publisher of Montreal from 1835 until his
death in 1893. His mother is Mrs. Sarah Lovell, a daughter of N.
P. M. Kurczyn, who was a German merchant of Montreal.
In the acquirement of his education Robert K. Lovell passed
through consecutive grades to the high school. In 1867 he became
connected with his father in business, becoming a partner in 1880
and so continuing until the latter’s death in July, 1893. The
business was conducted under the same style until 1903 when it
was incorporated. Since 1903 he has been president of the firm of
John Lovell & Son, Ltd., publishers of Lovell’s Gazetteer of the
Dominion of Canada and Newfoundland, Lovell’s Montreal Directory,
Lovell’s Montreal Business Directory and numerous other
publications. In all of his business affairs he never deviates
from the highest standards. He is an Anglican in religious faith.
WILLIAM OKELL HOLDEN DODDS.
For over twenty years Major William O. H. Dodds has been
connected with the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York,
being at present the assistant manager for Quebec and the
maritime provinces. He was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, July
3, 1867, a son of the late Charles Dodds, a manufacturer of that
province, who died in June, 1893. The mother of our subject, who
was before her marriage Miss Agnes Smith, died in December, 1910.
William Dodds received his education in the Yarmouth high school
and the Yarmouth Academy of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. He completed
his school education in 1884 and then entered the employ of
the Bank of Yarmouth, remaining with that institution until
1887. From 1887 to 1888 he assisted his father in the wholesale
and retail dry-goods business, but in the latter year came to
Montreal, entering the wholesale dry-goods trade, with which line
he continued until 1892. In that year he joined the staff of the
Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York as cashier and, rising
through various positions, was made the assistant manager of the
concern for Quebec and the maritime provinces, which office he
yet holds. Mr. Dodds has also been one of the promoters of the
Consumers’ Cotton Company.
On November 29, 1910, Mr. Dodds married Jean Hamilton Holt,
eldest daughter of Robert W. Tyre, of Montreal. Mrs. Dodds is
greatly interested in athletics and in 1911 was elected president
of the Ladies’ Montreal Curling Club.
Major Dodds is also a well known amateur athlete. He was formerly
president of the Canadian Amateur Athletic Union; is a member
of the executive committee of the Amateur Skating Association
of Canada; and was selected as one of the team of the Montreal
Curling Club to proceed to Scotland in December, 1908, but
was unable to go. He has long been in the volunteer military
service, being formerly a captain in the Fifth Regiment, Royal
Scots. He subsequently commanded the Third Battery, Montreal,
and then organized the Twenty-first (Westmount) Battery, which
he commanded from October 26, 1907, to April 9, 1910. He is
now engaged in the reorganization of the First Regiment,
Grenadier Guards of Canada. In January, 1906, Major Dodds was
elected president of the Montreal Military Institute and is now
councillor of the Boy Scout movement.
Mr. Dodds is a Presbyterian and gives his political support to
the conservative party. He is a member of the Montreal Club,
the Montreal Military Institute, the Montreal Curling Club, the
Montreal Amateur Athletic Association, the Montreal Hunt Club,
the St. James Club, the Royal Montreal Golf Club and others.
ISAIE PREFONTAINE.
Isaie Prefontaine, no less highly esteemed for his business
capacity and enterprise than for his public-spirited citizenship,
has contributed along various lines to the welfare and progress
of the city in which he makes his home. A native of Beloeil, he
was born in 1861 and in the pursuit of his education attended
Montreal College, from which he was graduated with honors. From
the outset of his career he has made his labors count as factors
in general progress and improvement. He has been a close student
of conditions and problems of the time and along practical lines
has worked for betterment.
He has taken a warm interest in the commercial development of
the city and has been prominently identified with various bodies
working toward that end. He was president of the Chamber of
Commerce of Montreal for the year 1908-9 and for six years was
president of the School of High Commercial Studies. In 1909
he became president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce
for the province of Quebec and was continued in that high and
important office for three years. He has also been a member of
the Board of Trade and has been a cordial cooperator in the
movement for providing facilities for specialized instruction
and training of those engaged in manufacturing and other
industrial pursuits.
[Illustration: ISAIE PREFONTAINE]
His wide research and investigation enable him to speak with
authority upon many questions bearing upon the business condition
of the city and its possibilities for progress along industrial
and commercial lines. He is an idealist, whose methods are
practical, and is a man of action rather than of theory.
In 1883 he married Miss Eliza Pigeon, a daughter of Olivier
Pigeon, of Vercheres, Quebec. He belongs to both the Club St.
Denis and the Canadian Club and in the city has a wide and
favorable acquaintance. The Montreal Herald has termed him “a man
of capacity and high character.”
FRANCIS WAYLAND CAMPBELL, M. D.
Dr. Francis Wayland Campbell, practitioner, educator and editor
of medical journals, winning distinction along each line, was
born in Montreal on the 5th of November, 1837, a son of the late
Rollo Campbell, at one time publisher of the Montreal Daily
Pilot and a native of Perthshire, Scotland. Dr. Campbell’s more
specifically literary education was obtained at Dutton Academy
and the Baptist College, and in preparation for a professional
career he studied medicine in McGill University, from which he
was graduated with the M. D. degree in 1860. He at once located
for practice in his native city, where he continued until his
death. After the completion of his course at McGill he spent some
time in study abroad, investigating the methods and watching the
clinics of eminent physicians and surgeons of London, Dublin,
Edinburgh and Glasgow. In 1861 he passed with high rank an
examination before the Royal College of Physicians of London.
In October, 1861, Dr. Campbell married Miss Agnes Stuart Rodger,
of Greenock, Scotland, and in November returned with his bride
to Canada, opening an office for practice in Montreal. Success
came to him almost immediately because his equipment was good and
because of his recognition of and marked devotion to the duties
of the profession. He was offered the editorship of the hospital
report department of the British-American Journal, accepted it
and continued to serve in that connection until 1864, when the
publication of the paper ceased. The Canada Medical Journal
was soon afterward started and Dr. Campbell joined Dr. Fenwick
in its editorial management, being thus associated from 1864
until 1872. In the meantime he had joined the medical faculty of
Bishop’s College, whereupon Dr. Fenwick declined to associate
with him any longer in the publication of the Canada Medical
Journal. The result was the discontinuance of that paper. Dr.
Campbell decided to contest the field with Dr. Fenwick, who began
issuing the paper independently, the Campbell publication being
known as the Canada Medical Record, of which he remained editor
and proprietor until his demise. In 1872 Dr. Campbell joined
Drs. David, Smallwood, Hingston and Trenholme in organizing the
medical faculty of Bishop’s College, after which he was appointed
professor of physiology and was elected by the faculty as their
registrar. His writings were considered a valuable contribution
to the literature of the profession and his publications were
liberally patronized by those holding to the highest professional
standards.
Dr. Campbell was a member of the volunteer militia from 1854 and
in 1860 was appointed assistant surgeon of the First Battalion,
Volunteer Rifles of Canada, now the First Battalion. He served
with his regiment on the eastern frontier, being at Hemingford
and at Durham during the Fenian raid in 1866. In the fall of that
year he was promoted to the rank of surgeon of the regiment and
again during the brief Fenian raid of 1871 was with his command
at Pigeon Hill, at St. Armands and St. Johns. After being for a
great many years surgeon of the Prince of Wales Rifles he was
appointed, on the formation of the Regular Canadian Militia, to
the office of surgeon of the Infantry School Corps at St. Johns,
Province of Quebec, and held the position for nineteen years,
being then retired at the age limit with the rank of surgeon
lieutenant colonel. At that time the regiments were known and
still are as the Royal Regiments Canadian Infantry. In 1894 he
established the V. R. I. Magazine and became its first editor.
Lennoxville conferred upon him the honorary degree of D. C. L. in
1895. Two years later his son, Dr. Rollo Campbell, was appointed
demonstrator of anatomy in Bishop’s College. Another matter of
interest and importance in the life record of Dr. Campbell was
that he held for forty-three years the position of chief medical
examiner for the New York Life Insurance Company at Montreal and
his son, Dr. Rollo Campbell, was his assistant. He was honorary
president of the Military Institute for several years and was
one of the founders of the Western Hospital of Montreal. He was
called the father of that institution and two years ago the
hospital placed a very handsome bronze tablet to his memory in
the institution. At the time of his death he was dean of the
medical faculty of Bishop’s College at Montreal. His degrees were
M. A., M. D. and L. R. C. P. of London. Honor and distinction
came to him in many ways, and at all times he bore his honors
with becoming modesty.