village of New Glasgow, Queen's County, in the year 1833. He was
educated at the district school of his native settlement, and afterwards
entered the Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church of Nova
Scotia, which was then situated at Truro, in that Province. He completed
his education at the Seminary, and soon afterwards embarked in
journalism at Charlottetown, where he founded a newspaper called _The
Patriot_. Under his editorship and business management this journal
became, in the course of a few years, the leading organ of public
opinion in Prince Edward Island. It advocated Liberal principles, and
was conducted with much energy and ability. The editor had inherited
Liberal ideas from his father, and spoke and wrote on behalf of them
with great effect. After a time he became estranged from the leader of
the Liberal Party, the chief cause of estrangement arising from the
latter's having lent his countenance to some proceedings tending to
exclude the Bible from the Common Schools. All minor causes of
controversy, however, were cast into the shade by the great question of
Confederation. After the close of the Quebec Conference in October,
1864, Mr. Laird took a firm stand against the terms of the scheme agreed
upon by the delegates, in so far as they related to his native Province.
He assigned as his principal reasons for adopting this course the fact
that the terms contained no proposal for the settlement of the Land
Question, which had long been a sore grievance with the tenantry of the
island; and the further fact that no provision was made for the
construction of public works, although the island could be called upon
to contribute its quota of taxation towards the Intercolonial Railway,
the canals, and the Pacific Railway. He took an active part in the
promotion of sanitary and other local improvements, and was for some
years a member of the Charlottetown City Council. His first entry into
Parliamentary life took place in 1871. The then-existing Government,
under the leadership of the Hon. James Colledge Pope (the present
Minister of Marine and Fisheries in the Dominion Government), had
carried a measure for the construction of the Prince Edward Island
Railway, running nearly the entire length of the island. This project
Mr. Laird had opposed, on the ground that it should have been first
submitted to the people at the polls, and also because he regarded the
undertaking as beyond the resources of the Province. The Government,
however, had carried the Bill providing for the construction of the road
through the House during the previous session, and the surveyors and
Commissioners had been appointed. The Chairman of the Commissioners, the
Hon. James Duncan, represented the constituency of Belfast in the
Legislative Assembly, and was obliged to return to his constituents for
reëlection after accepting office. Mr. Laird offered himself as a
candidate in opposition to the Government nominee. His candidature was
successful. The Commissioner was defeated, and Mr. Laird secured a seat
in the Assembly. A good deal of dissatisfaction had been excited by the
proceedings of the Local Government in connection with the construction
of the road, the result being that Mr. Pope, when he next met the House,
found he had lost the confidence of the majority, and being defeated, he
dissolved the House and appealed to the country. The appeal was
disastrous to his policy, a majority of the members returned being
hostile to his Government. Among these was Mr. Laird, who was elected a
second time for Belfast. A new Government was formed with Mr. R. P.
Haythorne as Premier. During the following autumn Mr. Laird accepted
office in this Government, and was sworn in as a Member of the Executive
Council in November, 1872. Finding that if the railway were proceeded
with on the credit of Prince Edward Island alone, the Provincial
finances would be seriously embarrassed, the new Ministers responded
favourably to an invitation from Ottawa to reconsider the question of
Union. Mr. Laird formed one of the delegation which proceeded to Ottawa
and negotiated terms of Union with the Dominion Government. After the
return of the delegates the Local House was dissolved in order that the
terms agreed upon might be submitted to the people. A good deal of
finesse was practised by the Opposition, and various side issues were
imported into the election contest. The result was the return of a
majority hostile to Mr. Haythorne's Ministry, and Mr. Pope again
succeeded to the reins of Government. Under his auspices the terms of
Union were slightly modified, and Prince Edward Island entered
Confederation.
Mr. Laird had meanwhile succeeded to the leadership of the Liberal
Party. The House did not divide, however, on the question of
Confederation, and both Parties concurred in supporting the measure. Mr.
Laird resigned his seat in the Local Legislature, and offered himself as
a candidate for the House of Commons for the electoral district of
Queen's County. He was returned by a large majority, and on the opening
of the second session of the second Parliament of the Dominion, in
October, 1873, he took his seat in the House of Commons at Ottawa. The
Pacific Scandal disclosures followed, and Sir John A. Macdonald's
Government made way for that of the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie. In the new
Administration Mr. Laird accepted the portfolio of Minister of the
Interior, and was sworn into office on the 7th of November. Upon
returning to his constituents in Queen's County he was returned by
acclamation. He was again returned by acclamation at the general
election of 1874. He retained his office of Minister of the Interior
until the 7th of October, 1876, when he was appointed by the
Governor-General to the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-West
Territories. This position he has ever since filled with the best
results to the Dominion. During his tenure of office as Minister of the
Interior he carried several important measures through Parliament,
and--in the summer of 1874--effected an important Treaty with the
Indians of the North-West, whereby he secured to the Crown the
possession of a tract of 75,500 square miles in extent, and thus
guaranteed the peaceable possession of a large portion of the route of
the Canada Pacific Railway and its accompanying telegraph lines.
In 1864 Mr. Laird married Mary Louisa, second daughter of the late Mr.
Thomas Owen, who was for many years Postmaster-General of Prince Edward
Island. An elder brother of the Lieutenant-Governor, the Hon. Alexander
Laird, held office in the late Local Government of Prince Edward Island,
and at present represents the Second District of Prince, in the Local
Assembly.
THE HON. CHARLES E. B. DE BOUCHERVILLE.
The Bouchers and De Bouchervilles for over two hundred years have played
no unimportant part in the history of Canada. Lieutenant-General Pierre
Boucher, Sieur de Grobois, Governor of Three Rivers in 1653, the founder
of the Seigniory of Boucherville, and a man of great influence in his
day, was one of the most noted members of the family. The late Hon. P.
Boucher de Boucherville, for many years a Legislative Councillor of
Lower Canada, was the father of the subject of this sketch, who was born
at Boucherville, Province of Quebec, in 1820. He was educated at St.
Sulpice College, Montreal. He subsequently went to Paris, pursued his
studies in the medical profession there, and graduated with high
honours. He has been married twice, first to Miss Susanne Morrogh,
daughter of Mr. R. L. Morrogh, Advocate, of Montreal; and after her
death, to Miss C. Luissier, of Varennes. In 1861 he was elected to the
House of Assembly for the county of Chambly. He continued to represent
this constituency until 1867, when he entered the Legislative Council,
and became a member of Mr. Chauveau's Ministry, with the office of
Speaker of the Council, which position he held until February, 1873. On
the reconstruction of the Cabinet, September 22nd, 1874, he was
entrusted with the formation of a Ministry. This duty he accomplished
successfully, taking for himself the portfolio of Secretary and
Registrar, and Minister of Public Instruction. On the 27th January,
1876, he changed his portfolio for that of Agriculture and Public Works.
In February, 1879, he was called to the Senate, an honour which he
accepted without resigning his seat in the Legislative Council.
The De Boucherville Ministry remained in power until the 4th of March,
1878, when it was summarily dismissed by the Hon. Luc Letellier de St.
Just, Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, for reasons which appeared to
him to be just. The facts with reference to this matter have been
detailed in the sketch of the life of Mr. Letellier, contained in the
first volume of this work. On the refusal of Mr. De Boucherville to name
a successor, Mr. Letellier called in the Hon. Henri Gustave Joly of
Lotbinière, and invited him to form a Ministry. In October, 1879, the
ex-Premier and his friends succeeded in defeating the Liberal
Government. A Conservative Ministry was formed, in whose councils,
however, Mr. De Boucherville has taken no part, though his efforts to
drive from power the Liberal Administration were conspicuously displayed
in the Upper Chamber of the Province. He is a good speaker, precise,
moderate and adroit. He is skilful in defence and equally skilful in
attack. His administrative capacity is considerable, and the duties of
the several offices which he has held at various intervals, have been
ably and industriously performed.
[Illustration: SAMUEL NELLES, signed as S. S. NELLES]
THE REV. SAMUEL NELLES, D.D., LL.D.,
_PRESIDENT OF VICTORIA UNIVERSITY, COBOURG._
Dr. Nelles's life, like that of most men of purely scholastic pursuits,
has been comparatively uneventful, and does not form a very fruitful
field for biographical purposes. It has, however, been an eminently
useful one, and has been attended with results most beneficial to the
educational establishment with which his name has long been associated,
and over which he has presided for a continuous period of thirty years.
He is of German descent, on both the paternal and maternal sides. His
paternal grandparents emigrated from Germany to the State of New York
sometime during the last century, and settled in the historic valley of
the Mohawk, where some of their descendants still reside. There Dr.
Nelles's father, the late Mr. William Nelles, was born, and there he
passed the early years of his life. He married Miss Mary Hardy, who was
also of German stock on the mother's side, and was born in the State of
Pennsylvania. By this lady he had a numerous family, the eldest son
being the subject of this sketch. The parents emigrated from New York
State to Upper Canada soon after the close of the War of 1812-15, and
devoted themselves to farming pursuits. The Doctor was born at the
family homestead, in the quiet little village of Mount Pleasant--known
to the Post Office Department as Mohawk--in what is now the township of
Brantford, in the county of Brant, about five miles south-west of the
present city of Brantford, on the 17th of October, 1823. At the present
day, the schools of Mount Pleasant will bear comparison with those of
many places of much larger population; but fifty years ago, when young
Samuel Nelles was in attendance there, they were like most other schools
in the rural districts of Upper Canada--that is to say, they afforded no
facilities for anything beyond a very rudimentary educational training.
Such as they were, however, they furnished the only means of instruction
at his command until he had entered upon his seventeenth year. Previous
to that time he had lived at home, attending school and assisting his
father in farm work. He had, however, displayed great fondness for
study, and had, by dint of his natural ability and steady application,
made greater progress than could have been made by any boy who was not
possessed by an ardent thirst for knowledge. His parents accordingly
resolved that he should have an opportunity of following out the natural
bent of his mind. In 1839 he was placed at Lewiston Academy, in the
State of New York, where he spent an industrious year, and where he had
for a tutor the brilliant, witty and humorous John Godfrey Saxe. Mr.
Saxe was not then known to the world as a poet, but he was an
accomplished philologist, and was reading for the Bar. He had just
graduated at Middlebury College, Vermont, and was teaching
_belles-lettres_ in the Lewiston Academy contemporaneously with the
prosecution of his legal studies. In October, 1840, young Nelles
transferred himself to an academy at Fredonia, in Chautauqua county,
N.Y., where he remained ten months. In the following October (1841) he
entered the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, N.Y., where he devoted
his time chiefly to Classics, Mathematics, English Literature and
Criticism. Having spent a profitable year at Lima, he entered Victoria
College, Cobourg--which was then under the Presidency of the Rev.
Egerton Ryerson--in the autumn of 1842. He was one of the first two
matriculated students at the institution, which had just been
incorporated as a University. After an Arts course of two years at
Victoria College, and a year spent in study at home, he attended for
some time at the University of Middletown, Connecticut, where he
graduated as B.A. in 1846. He then spent a year as a teacher in Canada,
and took charge of the Newburgh Academy, in the county of Lennox. In
June, 1847, he entered the ministry of the Wesleyan Methodist Church,
and was placed in charge of a congregation at Port Hope, where he
remained for a year. He was then transferred to the old Adelaide Street
Church, Toronto, where he laboured for two years. Thence he was
transferred to London, but had only resided there about three months
when, in the month of September, 1850, he was appointed President of
Victoria College. This important and responsible position he has held
ever since.
At the time of his taking office, the institution was by no means in a
flourishing condition. It was carried on under circumstances of great
difficulty and embarrassment, and had a competent administrator not been
found to take charge of it, its future would have been very
problematical. An improvement in its condition, however, was perceptible
from the time when Mr. Nelles took the management. It has continued to
prosper ever since, and has long ago taken rank among the most
noteworthy educational institutions in the Dominion. At the time of
Professor Nelles's appointment there was only a single
Faculty--Arts--and the attendance was very small. The teachers were only
five in number. The Professor's vigorous administration soon effected a
marked change for the better. In 1854 the Faculty of Medicine was added.
It at first embraced only one medical college, which was presided over
for many years by the late Dr. Rolph. In process of time a second
institution, L'École de Médecine et de Chirurgie, Montreal, became
affiliated, and still continues to hold the same relationship to the
University. A Law Faculty was added in 1862, and in 1872 a Faculty of
Theology.
When Professor Nelles became President he at the same time became
Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, Logic, and the Evidences of
Religion. These subjects he has continued to teach ever since, with the
addition, since 1872, of Homiletics. He has devoted his life to the task
of building up the institution, and has been ably seconded by the staff
of teachers whom he has from time to time gathered about him. Until
comparatively recent times there was no endowment fund, and the College
had to depend for its support solely on tuition fees, on the annual
contributions of the ministers and people of the Wesleyan Methodist
Body, and on a Parliamentary grant which Victoria College, in common
with other denominational schools, had been wont to receive. After
Confederation, all grants to denominational colleges were discontinued,
and Victoria College was left almost entirely unprovided for. At a
meeting of the Methodist Conference it was proposed by President Nelles
that an appeal should be made to the people for contributions to an
endowment fund. The proposal was adopted by the Conference, and the Rev.
Dr. Punshon, who was then resident in Canada, took an active personal
interest in the movement. He contributed $3,000 out of his own pocket,
and made a personal tour through part of Ontario, holding public
meetings, whereby a sum of $50,000 was secured. Several other Methodist
ministers followed his example, and the fund steadily increased. In
1873, however, the amount was still insufficient, and the Rev. Joshua H.
Johnson was appointed by the Conference to make further collections. Mr.
Johnson entered upon his task, and pursued it with great vigour. His
efforts were supplemented by a munificent bequest of $30,000 from the
late Mr. Edward Jackson, of Hamilton. The requisite amount was
eventually obtained, and the future of Victoria College secured.
The erection of Faraday Hall, at a cost of $25,000, chiefly for
Scientific purposes, marks a new epoch in the history of Victoria
College. This Hall was formally opened on the 29th of May, 1878. Dr.
Haanel, a distinguished German Professor, was placed in charge of the
scientific department, and the results of his teaching are already
apparent in an awakened interest in scientific matters displayed by the
students of the College.
Upon the whole, Dr. Nelles may well be pardoned if he looks back upon
his thirty years' Presidency of Victoria College with a considerable
degree of complacency. To him, more than to anyone else, is due its
present state of prosperity and enlarged efficiency. He has also taken a
warm interest in educational matters unconnected with the College, and
his influence is perceptibly felt in all the local schools. He was for
two successive years elected President of the Teachers' Association of
Ontario, and his views on all matters pertaining to public instruction
are held in high respect.
Dr. Nelles was chosen a delegate to represent the Canadian Conference at
the General Methodist Conference held at Philadelphia in 1864, at the
New Brunswick Conference of 1866, and at the English Wesleyan Conference
held at Newcastle in 1873. The degree of Doctor of Divinity was
conferred upon him by the University of Queen's College, Kingston, in
1860. His Doctor's degree in Law was conferred upon him in 1873 by the
University of Victoria College. He is the author of a popular text-book
on Logic, and has frequently contributed to periodical literature. He
enjoys high repute as a lecturer, more especially on educational
subjects; and his sermons, some of which have been published, are said
to be of an exceptionally high order.
On the 3rd of July, 1851, he married Miss Mary B. Wood, daughter of the
Rev. Enoch Wood, of Toronto, by whom he has a family of five children.
THE HON. WILLIAM HUME BLAKE.
The late Chancellor Blake, one of the most distinguished jurists that
ever sat on the Canadian Bench, was a member of an Irish family, known
as the Blakes of Cashelgrove, in the county of Galway. The family was
well connected and stood high among the county magnates. Sometime about
the middle of the last century, Dominick Edward Blake, its chief
representative, married the Hon. Miss Netterville, daughter of Lord
Netterville, of Drogheda. After her death, he married a second wife, who
was a daughter of Sir Joseph Hoare, Baronet, of Annabella, in the county
of Cork. By this lady he had four sons, one of whom, christened Dominick
Edward, after his father, took orders as a clergyman of the Church of
England, and became Rector and Rural Dean of Kiltegan and
Loughbrickland. This gentleman married Miss Anne Margaret Hume, eldest
daughter of Mr. William Hume, of Humewood, M.P. for the county of
Wicklow. During the progress of the rebellion of 1798, Mr. Hume sent his
children to Dublin for safety, and took personal command of a corps of
yeomanry raised in his county. He fell a victim to his loyalty, and was
shot near his own residence at Humewood by some rebels of whom he was in
pursuit. Lord Charlemont, in a published letter, alluded to this
deplorable event as "the murder of Hume, the friend and favourite of his
country," and characterized it as an "example of atrocity which exceeded
all that went before it."
William Hume Blake, the subject of this memoir, was the grandson and
namesake of the unfortunate gentleman above referred to, and was one of
the fruits of the marriage of his father, the Rev. D. E. Blake, to Miss
Hume. He was born at the Rectory, at Kiltegan, County Wicklow, on the
10th of March, 1809. He was the second son of his parents, his elder
brother, Dominick Edward, being named in honour of his father and
paternal grandfather. The elder brother emulated his father's example,
and became a clergyman of the Church of England. The younger, after
receiving his education at Trinity College, Dublin, studied surgery
under Surgeon-General Sir Philip Crampton. Surgery, however, was not
much to his taste. The accompaniments of that profession--notably the
coarse jokes and experiments which he was daily called upon to encounter
in the dissecting-room--proved at last so repulsive to his nature that
he abandoned surgery altogether, and entered upon a course of
theological study with a view to entering the Church. His studies had
not proceeded far, however, before he and his elder brother determined
to emigrate to Canada. This determination was carried out in the summer
of 1832. A short time before leaving his native land, the younger
brother married his cousin, Miss Catharine Hume, the granddaughter--as
he himself was the grandson--of the William Hume whose tragical death
has already been recorded. This lady, who shared alike the struggles
and triumphs of her distinguished husband till the close of his earthly
career, still survives.
The Blake brothers were induced to emigrate to this country, partly
because their prospects at home were not particularly bright, partly in
consequence of the strong inducements held out by the then
Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, Sir John Colborne. The
representations of Major Jones, the elder brother's father-in-law,
doubtless contributed something to the result. The Major was a retired
officer who had served in this country during the war of 1812-'13-'14,
and had taken part in the battles of Queenston Heights and Lundy's Lane.
He was fond of fighting his battles over again by his own fireside and
that of his son-in-law. He was never weary of enlarging on the beauty
and primitive wildness of Canadian scenery, the pleasures and freedom
from conventionality of a life spent in the backwoods, and the brilliant
prospects awaiting young men of courage, energy, endurance, and ability,
in the wilds of Upper Canada. The Blake brothers were Irishmen, and were
gifted with the national vividness of imagination. They doubtless
pictured to themselves the delights of "a lodge in some vast
wilderness," where game of all sorts was abundant, and where game laws
had no existence. They had of course no adequate conception of the
struggles and trials incident to pioneer life. They were not alone in
their notions about Canada. Many of their friends and acquaintances
about this time became imbued with a desire to emigrate, and upon taking
counsel together they found that there were enough of them to form a
small colony by themselves. Having made all necessary arrangements they
chartered a vessel--the _Ann_, of Halifax--and sailed for the St.
Lawrence in the month of July, 1832. Among the friends and relations of
the brothers Blake embarked on board were their mother, who had been
left a widow; their sister and her husband, the late Archdeacon Brough;
the late Mr. Justice Connor; the Rev. Benjamin Cronyn, late Bishop of
Huron; and the Rev. Mr. Palmer, Archdeacon of Huron. After a six weeks'
voyage they reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence, whence by slow
degrees they made their way to Little York, as the Upper Canadian
capital was then called. Here they remained until the following spring,
when they divided their forces. Some of them remained in York;
others--including Mr. Connor and Mr. Brough--proceeded northward to the
township of Oro, on Lake Simcoe; and others settled on the Niagara
peninsula. The elder Blake had meanwhile been appointed by the
Lieutenant-Governor to a Rectory in the township of Adelaide, and there
he accordingly pitched his tent. His brother, the subject of this
sketch, purchased a farm in the same part of the country, at a place on
Bear Creek--now called Sydenham River--near the present site of the
village of Katesville, or Mount Hope, in the county of Middlesex. He
then had an opportunity of realizing the full delights of a life in the
Canadian backwoods. "With whatever romantic ideas of the delights of
such a life Mr. Hume Blake had determined on making Canada his home,"
says a contemporary Canadian author, "they were soon dispelled by the
rough experiences of the reality. The settler in the remotest section of
Ontario to-day has no conception of the struggles and hardships that
fell to the lot of men who, accustomed to all the refinements of life,
found themselves cut off from all traces of civilization in a land,
since settled and cultivated, but then so wild that between what are now
populous cities there existed only an Indian trail through the forest.
Mr. Blake was not a man to be easily discouraged, but soon found that
his talents were being wasted in the wilderness. In after years he was
fond of telling of the rude experiences of life in the bush, and among
other incidents how that he had, on one occasion, walked to the
blacksmith's shop before mentioned to obtain a supply of harrow-pins,
and, finding them too heavy to carry, had fastened them to a chain,
which he put round his neck, and so dragged them home through the
woods."