INDEX. (continued 30)

Cockburn, George Ralph Richardson, Toronto, M.P. for Centre Toronto, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 15th February, 1834. He received his education in the High School and University of his native city, where he graduated in 1857, with the highest classical honors, carrying off the Stratton prize. He subsequently prosecuted his classical studies in Germany under the celebrated Professor Zumpt. On his return home he engaged for several years as a teacher at Merchiston Castle Academy and at Montgreenan House Academy. In 1858 he came to Canada and began his career here as rector of the Model Grammar School, having been appointed to this position by the Council of Public Instruction for Upper Canada. Some time afterwards he was commissioned by the government of Canada to inspect the higher educational institutions of the province of Ontario, and the results of this investigation, which extended over a period of two years, were given to the public in two comprehensive reports, in which the condition and modes of higher education were carefully and elaborately set forth. Mr. Cockburn then visited a number of the principal institutions of learning in the United States, in order to make himself familiar with their methods. In 1861 he was appointed principal of Upper Canada College, and a member of the Senate of Toronto University. For over twenty years he had a successful career as an instructor of youth, and his able management of Upper Canada College raised the institution high in public estimation both for the thoroughness of its teaching and the excellent moral influence which prevailed within its walls. After the resignation of the rectorship, Mr. Cockburn travelled for two years in Europe, making himself acquainted with the various systems of government on that continent. There are few men in Canada who have done more than Mr. Cockburn for the cause of education. The celebrated Dr. Schmidt, of Edinburgh, said of him that he was no ordinary scholar, but a thorough philologist, possessing a good insight into the structure, the relation and affinities subsisting between the ancient and modern languages of Europe, and always characterized him as one of the best Latin scholars that Scotland has produced. Mr. Cockburn takes an interest in all public questions, and is one of the live citizens of Toronto. He is president of the Toronto Land and Investment Company; a director of the London and Canadian Loan and Agency Company, the Building and Loan Association, the Glasgow and London Assurance Company, and of the Ontario Bank. He was a member of the Senate of the University of Toronto for over twenty years. At the general election of 1887 Mr. Cockburn presented himself to the electors of Centre Toronto for parliamentary honors, when they returned him by a large majority—his opponent being Mr. Harvey. In religion he is a Presbyterian; and in politics a Conservative. He is married to Mary, daughter of Hampden Leane, of Kentucky, United States.

Prior, James, Manager of the Lybster Cotton Mills, Merritton, Ontario, was born in Toronto, on the 12th November, 1849. His father, Richard Prior, was a British soldier, who settled in Canada about the year 1847. James was educated in the common schools of his native city. Shortly after leaving school he went into a grocery store, where he served about four years, and then into the warehouse of Gordon, Mackay and Co., wholesale dry goods merchants, Toronto. Here he remained about a year, when in 1868 he was transferred to that firm’s cotton mills at Merritton. Here he began his upward career, and worked in a subordinate position until 1878, when he was appointed manager. Since then he has steadily devoted himself to the business, and we can say there is now not a more competent manager of a cotton mill in the Dominion. For several years Mr. Prior has travelled through the New England States to visit the New England mills, and pick up all the new ideas introduced, and by this means he has been able to produce in the Lybster mills the finest cotton fabrics in the Canadian markets. Mr. Prior has been a temperance man from youth, and has in consequence exerted a good influence among the employees in the mill and in the neighborhood in which he resides. He has in his day taken a lively interest in the Liberal-Conservative cause, especially in its protective policy; does not favor commercial union with the United States. In religion he is an adherent of the Episcopal church. He was married in October, 1878, to Sara Ann, daughter of Alexander and Mary Winslow, of Thorold, Ontario, and has a family of four children, two boys and two girls.

Lemieux, François Xavier, Barrister, M.P.P. for the county of Levis, province of Quebec, is the leading criminal lawyer of the district of Quebec, and well-known throughout the Dominion as the principal counsel for the defence in the Riel case, in which he was associated with Messrs. Fitzpatrick, of Quebec, and Greenshields, of Montreal. His connection with this great cause célèbre, and the popular excitement to which it and its tragic sequel gave rise throughout the country, but especially in the province of Quebec, made his name very familiar at the time. Mr. Lemieux was born at Levis, on the 9th of April, 1841. His parents were of the farming class, but his uncle, the late Hon. François Lemieux, was a man of great public note in his day, a leading member of the Quebec bar, member for Levis county in the Legislative Assembly of Canada, and one of the commissioners of crown lands and public works before confederation. His memory is still warmly cherished by the people of Levis. Our subject was educated at the Levis College and Quebec Seminary, and studied law at Quebec with Hon. M. A. Plamondon, then a prominent practitioner and now resident judge of the Superior Court in the Arthabasca district, whose daughter, Diana, he afterwards married. Called to the bar in 1872, he soon distinguished himself, especially as a criminal pleader, and his fame in that branch of the profession has since risen to such a pitch that no prisoner arraigned for trial before the criminal courts of the Quebec and surrounding districts considers his interests at all safe unless Mr. Lemieux has been retained for the defence. This popular confidence in his abilities is undoubtedly warranted by his wonderful success in the great majority of the cases with which he has been connected. It has almost passed into a proverb among the French Canadians of the Quebec district, that if any man can cheat the gallows of its due, François Xavier Lemieux is the man to do so. Indeed, as in the Boutel poisoning case, he has been known to save his client from the last penalty of the law, even after the gallows had been actually erected and within a few hours of the time fixed for the execution. A man of rare eloquence and knowledge of human nature, deeply versed in the criminal jurisprudence of the country and always armed at all points for the fray, and endowed with marvellous energy and versatility, he may be said to have no equal, and certainly no superior in his specialty at the Lower Canadian bar to-day. The secret of his forensic triumphs must unquestionably be looked for in his skill in cross-examination and his power to sway juries, and it was these characteristics which pointed him out as the fit and proper person to lead for the defence in the Riel case at Regina. It was thought in Lower Canada that if any one could snatch the half-breed leader from his perilous position, Mr. Lemieux was the man, and, when he volunteered his services for the purpose, his offer was accepted with an enthusiastic burst of gratitude from a great body of his fellow-countrymen. For these hopes on the occasion, the result of the trial proved disastrous, but the effort he made to save Riel from the scaffold, as well on the trial as afterwards, only served to increase Mr. Lemieux’s popularity and to intensify the bitterness of the agitation which followed the rebel leader’s execution. In that agitation Mr. Lemieux took a most active and prominent part, figuring and speaking with his impassioned eloquence at nearly all the great meetings at Quebec, Montreal, Levis, etc., to protest against Riel’s hanging and the oppression of the half-breeds. In fact, few men contributed more to the success of the so-called national movement, which overthrew the Ross administration and brought the Liberals and Conservative bolters into power under Hon. H. Mercier in the province of Quebec after the general election of October, 1886. For some years before the Riel trial, Mr. Lemieux had been a member of the Quebec Legislature. He had been an unsuccessful candidate for Bonaventure during the Joly administration in 1878, and again for Beauce at the general election of 1882; but in November, 1883, on the resignation of Hon. T. Paquet to accept the shrievalty of Quebec, he was returned after a hard contest as the representative of Levis county, and re-elected for the same constituency at the last general election, when he passed over with his friends from the Opposition to the treasury benches in the Legislative Assembly on the defeat of the Ross and the formation of the Mercier government, during the session of 1887. In the house, Mr. Lemieux is a ready debater, and few of his adversaries care to cross swords with him. He belongs to the Roman Catholic faith; and in politics is a Liberal.

Jolicœur, Philippe Jacques, Q.C., Assistant Provincial Secretary, Quebec, is one of the prominent figures of official life at the ancient capital, and a gentleman who has made his mark in the profession of the law. He was born in Quebec, on the 30th April, 1829, and was educated in the classics at the Quebec Seminary, which has turned out so many eminent men in the church and the learned professions. On the completion of his classical course, in 1849, he began the study of the law under Sir N. F. Belleau, then a prominent practitioner at the Quebec bar, and afterwards first lieutenant-governor of the province of Quebec, and on his admission to the bar, in 1854, the two entered into a law partnership which was only dissolved in 1858, when Sir Narcisse entered actively into politics. Down to 1867, Mr. Jolicœur continued to divide his attention between his extensive law practice and his duties as a member of the city council of Quebec, in which he occupied a seat for a number of years with honor to himself and advantage to his fellow-citizens. During his career in the council, he was elected by his colleagues to act as pro-mayor for the city in the absence of the regular incumbent of that office, and gave public satisfaction in the position of chief magistrate. A sound lawyer and one of the most respectable and self-respecting practitioners, with talents rather of the solid than the brilliant order, he was elevated to the silk and created a Q.C. in July, 1867, and later on in the same month, on the organization of the provincial departments at Quebec, at the outset of confederation, he was offered and accepted the important post of assistant provincial secretary, which he still holds, though he has been tempted to accept more exalted appointments. The position of resident judge of the Superior Court at Gaspé was in this way tendered to him, but family bereavements and failing health compelled him to decline. As an official, Mr. Jolicœur is noted for his efficiency, urbanity, and assiduity and generally esteemed by all who come into contact with him officially or otherwise. Though he never took a very active part in politics before he entered the civil service, he was always an adherent and supporter of the Conservative party. In religion he is a Roman Catholic; and as a French Canadian he has ever taken a deep and intelligent interest in the advancement of his race, holding office for years in the St. Jean Baptiste Society of Quebec, and filling for some time, also, the position of president of L’Institut Canadien of that city. In 1858, he married Honorine Matte, of Quebec, by whom he has had issue eleven children, all of whom except four boys were carried away by the hand of death while still young.

Cabana, Hubert Charon, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Prothonotary of the Superior Court for the province of Quebec, district of St. Francis, was born on the 14th of June, 1838, at Verchères, a parish situate on the south side of the St. Lawrence river, about thirty miles from Montreal. He is the son of Lambert Charon Cabana, a well-to-do farmer, of Verchères, and of Marie Louise Endfield, granddaughter of Colonel Thomas Endfield, who came direct from England to what is now the province of Quebec, in 1760, and died in 1812, being eighty-two years of age. The subject of this sketch was educated at the College of L’Assomption, in the town of L’Assomption, a classical college, incorporated as such over fifty years ago. He took a full classical course, leaving the college in June, 1858; entered on the study of the law in October, 1858; was admitted to practice on October 7th, 1862, at Sherbrooke, and practised there as advocate, solicitor, and attorney, until the 17th September, 1885, when he was appointed prothonotary. On the 3rd October, 1880, the degree of Law Licentiate Magister was conferred on him by Lennoxville University; has been professor of civil law at the Lennoxville University since 1880; made Queen’s counsel on the 26th June, 1883; elected bâtonnier of the bar, district of St. Francis, on the 1st May, 1884; elected member of the city council of Sherbrooke, for the first time, in January, 1876, and was continued in office until his appointment as prothonotary, which appointment rendered him by law unable to act any longer as councillor, when he was unanimously elected mayor of Sherbrooke, in January, 1880, and again in 1885. On the 13th October, 1866, he established the Pionnier de Sherbrooke, it being now the oldest established French newspaper published in this part of the province of Quebec, known as the Eastern Townships, in partnership with L. C. Belanger, now practising in Sherbrooke as advocate. He bought out Mr. Belanger’s interest in the paper on the 24th July, 1874, and continued to publish it till April, 1878, when he sold it to “La Compagnie Typographique des Cantons de l’Est,” of which company he was chosen president, and continued to act in that capacity until September, 1885. In September, 1883, he went to Europe, and in the course of his tour visited the principal cities and places of interest in France, Belgium, and Italy. He is a Roman Catholic in religion. On the 13th July, 1866, he was married to Marietta, eldest daughter of Francis Carr, a well-to-do farmer of the township of Compton, about twelve miles from Sherbrooke, and who had become a Catholic some time before her marriage, her family being Protestant.

Botsford, Hon. Bliss, Moncton, N.B., was born on the 26th November, 1813, at Sackville, N.B. The Botsford family have taken a prominent part in New Brunswick and Canadian history. He is the seventh son of the late Hon. William Botsford, who was speaker of the New Brunswick Assembly, and one of the judges of the supreme court of the province. His grandfather, Amos Botsford, was a United Empire loyalist, from Newton, Conn., and was the first speaker of the New Brunswick Assembly after it became a separate province, and held that office for twenty-eight years. Hon. Lieut.-Col. Amos E. Botsford, senator from New Brunswick, is an elder brother of the subject of this sketch. Hon. Bliss Botsford was educated at King’s College, Fredericton; studied law with the late William End, of Bathurst; was admitted as an attorney in 1836; called to the bar of New Brunswick in 1838; and practised his profession at Moncton from 1836 to 1870. During those thirty-four years he had a fair share of criminal as well as an extensive civil practice, and gained well-merited distinction at the bar of his native province. He was brought into special prominence by the celebrated Albertite suit, in which he was the defendant’s attorney, and won the case. While at the bar, his vigorous, earnest, and persuasive style of delivery always made a favorable impression on a jury, being, like most of the members of his family, of commanding presence, with a personal magnetism that was often irresistible. He sat for Westmoreland in the New Brunswick Assembly, from 1851 to 1854, from 1857 to 1861, and from 1865 to October 24th, 1870, when he was elevated to the bench. As a judge, he is held in high esteem by the profession, being very painstaking, carefully weighing in his mind all cases presented for his consideration, and is logical and concise in his charges to the jury. He is not over-exacting in his requirements of younger members of the profession, generally allowing them considerable latitude and freedom; but when called upon to decide any point of a relevant or irrelevant character, he is prompt and firm in his decision. He was appointed surveyor-general in 1865, and was a member of the executive council during the administration of the late Hon. Sir Albert Smith, and speaker from 1867 until the general election in 1870, his politics being Conservative. Judge Botsford was married in 1842, at Moncton, to Jane, daughter of John Chapman, from Cumberland, England, and has had five children, three daughters and one son living, all married, and another son who died. Sarah L., the eldest daughter, is the wife of William J. Croasdale, civil engineer, Moncton; Eliza is the wife of George C. Peters, son of Dr. George Peters, deceased, St. John; Robert L. married Emily C., eldest daughter of Lewis Carroll, and is a physician and surgeon, practising at Richibucto, N.B.; and Florence is the relict of the late Thomas Byers, Moncton.

Bain, James William, St. Polycarpe, Quebec, M.P. for Soulanges, was born at St. Polycarpe, Quebec, on the 22nd June, 1838. Mr. Bain is one of that very large class of French Canadians who, though thoroughly identified with their fellow-countrymen, are partly of Scottish blood. The father of the subject of this sketch was Daniel Bain, from Caithness-shire, a thorough Scot, having all the best characteristics of his race. The mother was Adelaide Lantier, a descendant of an old French Canadian family, sister of the late J. P. Lantier, M.P. for Soulanges. The son has the Scottish cast of countenance, and might readily be mistaken for a native of the “land of the mountain and the flood.” He was educated in his native town, where he has ever since resided. On arriving at man’s estate, he entered business with his father, who carried on a large trade as a merchant in Polycarpe. Though taking an active and prominent part in public affairs in his own district from an early age, he has continued to devote his attention to his business, extending it in every way, until it has brought him a large amount of worldly prosperity. Mr. Bain first devoted attention to school affairs, and when elected to the school board was soon made president of that body, a position which he has retained for ten years. At the death of J. P. Lantier, in 1882, the Conservatives of the county chose Mr. Bain as their candidate in the election which was to follow. The contest was a keen one, and resulted in the election of his opponent, G. R. S. De Beaujeau, by a majority of two votes. Mr. Bain protested the election, and an appeal being made to the Supreme Court, Mr. Beaujeau was unseated. A new election followed in February, 1885, and Mr. Bain was returned by a majority of twenty-six votes, and took his seat in the House of Commons at Ottawa. The lot of the French Conservative member of parliament was not altogether a happy one during the contest in 1887, owing to the prejudice stirred up in relation to the unfortunate Riel affair; but Mr. Bain did not shrink from the contest, and again accepted the nomination of his party. The struggle was one of the keenest ever known in the district; but the people had faith in their old representative, and so he still sits in the house as the representative for Soulanges. Though differing from the younger school of French Canadian politicians, in that he lays little claim to being an orator, and makes no effort to shine in the theatrical way so many of them affect, Mr. Bain performs the duties of a representative of the people faithfully and well. He is strictly regular in his attendance, and brings to bear upon the legislation of the house practical experience in business affairs, and good common sense. In 1877 Mr. Bain married Georgiana, daughter of the late J. O. Lantier, well known in Montreal for many years as a prominent merchant.

Chisholm, Mrs. Addie, Ottawa, President of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of Ontario, is a native Canadian, having been born in the city of Hamilton, Ontario. Her early life was spent there, excepting a few years devoted to study in the Genesee Wesleyan Seminary, at Lima, New York, where she was distinguished for diligence, aptitude, and general proficiency. Both before and after her marriage she was known as an enthusiastic worker in every religious and charitable movement, and many benevolent institutions had the advantage of her wise counsel, gentle sympathy and bright encouragement. As an infant class teacher in one of the Methodist Sunday schools of Hamilton, she was remarkably successful in developing on right lines the tender minds that were entrusted to her care, and here she passed through just the training to fit her for the broader sphere of usefulness that was waiting her riper talents and attainments. Sympathizing very deeply with the temperance reformation, she could not but be drawn strongly towards the crusade work which was so successful in the United States some years ago, and when that great uprising of loving, ill-treated womanhood, was crystalized into the effective and permanent form—the Women’s Christian Temperance Union organization, Mrs. Chisholm at once came to the front as one of its enthusiastic supporters, warmest advocates, and most efficient directors. Mrs. Yeomans was the first president of the Ontario Union, and was succeeded by Mrs. Chisholm, several years ago, and has held the position up till to-day, being annually reinstated by the unanimous vote of her appreciative sisters. Her success in this sphere of responsibility must be judged by the facts already so well known in regard to the results attained by this great organization—results that were only possible through the united, prayerful, determined work of many loving hearts and heads, as well as a skilful leadership possessed of the faculty to govern, and guided and blessed by the wisdom and strength without which all labor is in vain. Not merely in the many organizations with which she has been connected, chief among which, of course, is the Union, has Mrs. Chisholm shown her genius and skill. For near four years she has been publisher and editor of the Woman’s Journal, the Canadian organ of the White Ribbon Army. She has also written tracts and pamphlets that have blessed and helped the temperance cause everywhere. She has visited, spoken, organized, and worked with an untiring energy that could only come from deep sympathy and fervent zeal; while every act has been characterized by Christian gentleness and kindness, that won where more openly aggressive methods would be sure to fail. We earnestly hope that our good sister may long be spared to aid with her tongue, her pen, and her brain, the cause that is so near to our heart, and that under the management and direction of such as she, and “the blessing that maketh rich and addeth no sorrow,” the Women’s Christian Temperance Union may continue a mighty power for good, until the end for which it was organized has been fully attained.

Noyes, John Powell, Q.C., Advocate, Waterloo, Quebec province, was born at Potton, county of Brome, Quebec, on the 15th September, 1842. His father, Heman B. Noyes, was of English descent, coming to Canada from Tunbridge, Vermont, where six generations of the family are buried. His mother, Sarah Powell, is also of English descent, but was born at Potton, Quebec. The subject of this sketch was educated at Bangor, Franklin county, N.Y., and at Fort Covington Academy. In 1861 he settled at Waterloo, studied law first with Huntington & Lay, and afterwards with Hon. Mr. Laframboise; graduated at the law school connected with St. Mary’s College, Montreal; was admitted to the bar in October, 1866, and was created a Queen’s counsel in 1879. He has held the offices of secretary-treasurer of the township of Shefford and village of Waterloo, chairman of the Waterloo school board, special commissioner of Bolton lands, bâtonnier of the Bedford bar, and is at present bâtonnier-general of the bar of the province of Quebec. He has been secretary-treasurer of the Stanstead, Shefford, and Chambly Railway for more than ten years. In 1864 he became editor of the Waterloo Advertiser, and continued to be so until 1875, making the paper a strong exponent of the principles of the Liberal party, as well as a very readable general newspaper. He is a leading member of the Masonic Order in his district; was worshipful master of his lodge for three terms; first principal of the R.A. Chapter; and grand Z. of Grand Chapter of R.A.M., of Quebec, for 1885 and 1886. He has taken part in all political contests, and in municipal affairs, since 1860; has been secretary, and later chairman, of Shefford County Reform Club for many years; and this has kept him in politics a great deal, as it has been remarked that this county seems to have a political contest always on hand. As if to make good our words, a contest is now (February, 1888) going on, and Mr. Noyes has been selected by the Reform or national convention of the county as its candidate; but in a county where the parties are so evenly divided, it is always difficult to tell in advance who will be elected. In religion, he is Protestant, and belongs to the Church of England; has often been a delegate to the Synod, and a valued member of various committees there. He was married, in November, 1867, to Lucy A., daughter of Joseph Merry, of Magog, Quebec, whose father was one of the early pioneers there, by whom he had issue six children, only four of whom are now living. Mrs. Noyes graduated before her marriage, at McGill Normal School, with academy diploma, and is at present provincial superintendent of the department of physiology and hygiene of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of the province of Quebec.

Pope, Hon. James Colledge, was born at Bedeque, Prince Edward Island, on the 11th June, 1826. He was the second son of the Hon. Joseph Pope, and his mother was Lucy Colledge, daughter of Capt. Colledge, of the 1st regiment of foot, who married a daughter of the Hon. Thomas Wright, several times administrator of the government of the island, and who was one of the commissioners appointed to administer the oath to the members of the first parliament which met in Charlottetown in 1773. The subject of this sketch received his early education on the island, and was afterwards sent to England to complete it. In early manhood he entered upon a mercantile career, as merchant, shipbuilder and shipowner, at Summerside, P.E.I., where he lived for many years, and which he was largely instrumental in building up. He was one of the passengers by the brig Fancy to California, when the gold fever broke out there in 1849. In 1863 he took up his residence in Charlottetown, where he remained until 1878, when his acceptance of the portfolio of minister of marine necessitated his removal to Ottawa. The last three years of his life he spent at Summerside, his old home, where he died on the morning of the 18th May, 1885; and was buried at St. Eleanor’s, in St. Mary’s churchyard (Episcopal), where a very handsome granite obelisk, erected as a tribute from his many friends, marks the last resting-place of one of Prince Edward Island’s most gifted and patriotic sons. Mr. Pope entered political life in 1857, and from that time onwards he was engaged in a constant turmoil of political excitement, having his ups and downs like most politicians. On the 10th September, 1870, he became leader of a coalition government, which, however, only lasted two years; but he was, on the dissolution of the house, triumphantly returned for Charlottetown, although he failed to secure a majority in the new house. On the 19th October, 1878, he was sworn a member of her Majesty’s Privy Council for Canada, and received the portfolio of minister of marine and fisheries, a position he held but a short time, when in 1881 he was forced, to the inexpressible grief of his many friends, by a general breaking up of his mental and physical powers, to retire from the active duties of his office, never, as the sequel proved, to resume them again. He always occupied a foremost place among those with whom his lot was cast. In his early life he took a very active interest in the volunteer movement, and passed through the various grades, retiring with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Besides being one of the most prominent merchants, he was also one of the largest landholders on the island, and farmed more extensively than any other man on it. He was also engaged in fishing industries, besides being interested in many other business ventures. He, however, attempted too much for his powers of endurance, and thus brought a useful life to an early close. In everything that he undertook, however, whether political, commercial or agricultural, he had the interests of the island at heart, and his memory will ever be revered by his countrymen, who possess monuments of his energy and worth more enduring than brass. The Prince Edward Island Railway is a memento of his public career that will ever serve to keep his memory green. In 1852 he married Eliza, second daughter of Thomas Pethick, of Charlottetown, by whom he had issue eight children.

Germain, Adolphe, Barrister, Sorel, province of Quebec, was born in St. Ours, in the same province, in June, 1837. His father was François Germain, an old patriot of 1837-38. Mr. Germain received a classical course of education at St. Hyacinthe College, Quebec province, and afterwards studied law; and for over fifteen years he has successfully practised his profession in Sorel, first alone, but latterly under the firm name of Germain & Germain, his partner being his eldest son, S. Adolphe Germain. In 1878 he was created a Queen’s counsel. He has been frequently called upon to represent the attorney-general of Quebec province in Crown cases, and was one of the joint counsel in the celebrated Provencher trial, in which the accused was found guilty, along with his paramour, of poisoning the latter’s husband, and afterwards executed for the murder—the woman being sent to the penitentiary for life. Mr. Germain has been mayor of Sorel, and is dean of the bar of Quebec, for the district of Richelieu. He is a public-spirited gentleman, and has identified himself with the leading improvements—among others the fine public buildings recently erected—in the thriving town in which he resides. He has also taken an active interest in all the political movements of the country, and stands high in the estimation of his fellow-citizens. In religion he is an adherent of the Roman Catholic church; and in politics is a staunch Liberal. In February, 1862, he was married to Marie Louise Demers, and the issue of the marriage has been five children.

Sears, James Walker, Lieutenant South Staffordshire regiment, was born in St. John, New Brunswick, on the 22nd January, 1861. He is a son of John Sears, of St. John, N.B., and Ann, daughter of the Rev. William Blackwood, of Nova Scotia, and grandson of Thatcher Sears, a United Empire loyalist, of the former place. He received his primary education in various private schools in his native city. He left St. John in 1877, and after spending a year at the Collegiate Institute at Galt, Ontario, became a cadet at the Royal Military College at Kingston. Here, on the 25th June, 1881, after a course of studies lasting for three and a half years, and having passed a successful examination, he was awarded a commission in the Canadian militia, and a commission in Her Majesty’s 38th South Staffordshire regiment of foot. In this regiment he served throughout the Egyptian campaign of 1882, was present at the reconnaissance in force at Kafr-el Dwar on the 5th August, the surrender of Damietta by Abdulal, and the subsequent occupation of Cairo. For those services he received a medal and the Khedive’s star. He visited the Holy Land in April, 1883, and in May of the same year returned to Malta from Egypt with his regiment. He was appointed Lieutenant in the Infantry School corps by the Canadian government in December, 1883, in which corps, at Toronto, he has since held the appointment of adjutant. He served in the North-West rebellion of 1885 as brigade major of the Battleford column, and was present at the battle of Cut Knife Hill, and subsequently commanded the scout corps of the Turtle Lake column in the pursuit of Big Bear. He was mentioned in despatches, and received the medal and clasp. He became brevet captain in the Canadian militia on the 21st December, 1887.

Proulx, Hon. Jean Baptiste George, Nicolet, province of Quebec, was born at Nicolet, on the 23rd April, 1809, and died on the 27th January, 1884. He was the son of J. B. Proulx and Magdalen Hébert. His great grandfather was one of the oldest settlers of Nicolet, having settled there in 1725. The subject of this sketch was educated at Nicolet College. He was elected, in 1860, for De La Vallière, and sat in the Legislative Council until the union. In 1867, he was appointed to the Legislative Council for life. He was a Liberal in politics. He was one of the patriots of 1837; and was charged with having cast bullets, but was not arrested. He was married, on the 20th January, 1835, to Julia, daughter of Dr. Calvin Alexander, a graduate of Harvard, and had issue as follows:—Rev. M. G. Proulx, of Nicolet College, and Revs. Edward and Stephen Proulx, of the Society of Jesus.

Charlebois, Alphonse, Contractor, Quebec, is well known throughout the Dominion as an extensive and successful undertaker of great public works. A French-Canadian, he is endowed with more than the ordinary energy and versatility of his race, and his career furnishes an apt illustration of the triumph of tact and pluck over adverse circumstances. He was not of the fortunate class who are said to come into the world with “a silver spoon in their mouth.” His parents were simple Lower Canadian habitants, and our subject was born of their marriage at the town of St. Henri, Hochelaga county, on the outskirts of Montreal, on the 15th December, 1841. His father, Arséne Charlebois, was a native of Pointe Claire, in Jacques Cartier county, P.Q., and his mother was Edwidge Chagnon, of Verchères, P.Q. On his father’s side he is closely related to the late Mr. Charlebois, M.P.P. for Laprairie; to the Rev. Mr. Charlebois, curé of Ste. Therese, and to the late Dr. Charlebois, of Bleury street, Montreal; and, on his mother’s, to the late Sir George Etienne Cartier, who owed his election for Verchères, then one of the most Liberal constituencies in Lower Canada (after his defeat in Montreal East by the present Chief Justice Sir A. A. Dorion), mainly to the exertions and influence of her brother, the late Paschal Chagnon, of Verchères. Young Charlebois was educated partly at the Christian Brothers’ School and partly at Maxwell’s Commercial School, both in Montreal, receiving a fair commercial training, in French and English. After leaving school he served about a year to the builder’s trade in Montreal, and then entered the hardware trade in that city as a clerk to the late Mr. Brewster, with whom he remained nine years down to 1865, when he bought out the business on the retirement of his employer. Two years later, he abandoned hardware, and boldly took up the lumber trade in Montreal, making advances to the lumberers on the Gatineau, and otherwise speculating in the great staple of the country with more or less success until 1872, when he took a new and still more enterprising departure. Since the days of the Hon. François Baby in Lower Canada, no French-Canadian had figured prominently as a public contractor. In that field, the English speaking element were virtually without competition. Mr. Charlebois pluckily resolved to enter it, and the results have more than justified this step on his part. He is to-day known from Halifax to Vancouver as a leading contractor, and the country is indebted to him for the successful execution of some of its most important public works. His first undertaking in this line was on the Lachine canal, and since then he has been connected with the contracts for the Dufferin improvements at Quebec, the graving dock at Levis, the Georgian Bay branch of the C.P.R., the construction of four sections of the same road in British Columbia, and the erection of the new parliament buildings at Quebec, and of the new departmental buildings on Wellington street, Ottawa. The two last mentioned structures remain as lasting monuments, as well to his taste and skill, as to his energy as a builder. He is a director of the Clemow syndicate for the construction of the Great North-Western Central Railway, Manitoba, and before his removal from Montreal to Quebec, which is now his residence, he was during three years an alderman, and afterwards, during four years, mayor of his native town of St. Henri. He belongs to the Roman Catholic faith, and during his residence in the Montreal district was elected people’s trustee for life of the Roman Catholic parish church of St. Henri. He has travelled exclusively in Canada and the United States, chiefly on business. In 1865 he married Marie Flore Charlotte Valois, daughter of the late Dr. Valois, of Pointe Claire, and at one time M.P. for the county of Jacques Cartier, P.Q., and by her has had issue four children, all of whom are still in their teens.

Dupré, Rev. L. L., Sorel, province of Quebec, was born in Sorel, in 1841, and educated at the Seminary of St. Hyacinthe, P.Q. In 1868, he was ordained a priest, and placed as vicar in the Roman Catholic cathedral. In 1873, he was called as vicar to his native town, and in 1875 was appointed to the important post of curé of Sorel. Sorel being the most considerable place in the Roman Catholic diocese of St. Hyacinthe, requires the unremitting exertions and oversight of the pastor, and no one could perform the duties more zealously and unremittingly than does the present worthy incumbent. The rev. father has, in addition to his special duties, assisted in many ways in promoting the material welfare of his native town. As an instance, it may be mentioned that in 1880, by his exertions amongst his parishioners subscriptions were raised to an amount sufficient to build a large addition to the general hospital of Richelieu county, rendering that institution much more comfortable for the patients, and more suitable to the growing requirements of the town. He was also mainly instrumental in furthering the erection of the new college building, which is acknowledged to be the finest structure of the kind in the province. Since his incumbency, he has had the former parish of St. Peter’s divided into three distinct parishes—St. Peter’s, Ste. Anne, and St. Joseph. The parish of Ste. Anne, of which parish Mr. Dupré is the curé, is quite a populous one, and through his active exertions, a commodious stone church was soon built in the parish, on one of the finest sites of the St. Lawrence. That the curé possesses very superior administrative abilities is sufficiently proved by the foregoing, and is further attested by the manner in which he performs his onerous ecclesiastical duties. He has a remarkable memory, is a fluent speaker, and as a pulpit orator is unequalled by few. He is an ardent admirer of art, which he patronises liberally, and is possessed of a considerable collection of valuable and rare books, engravings, etc., proving a literary and cultivated taste. He is much esteemed by his parishioners and by the community of Sorel generally.

Tessier, Jules, Barrister, Quebec, M.P.P. for Portneuf, is one of the most conspicuous and popular figures in the legal, political and social life of the ancient capital. His distinguished father, Hon. U. J. Tessier, is a judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench for the province of Quebec, and was formerly member for Portneuf in the Canadian parliament, commissioner of public works in the Macdonald-Sicotte administration, speaker of the Legislative Council before confederation, and at one time mayor of Quebec. Between the careers of the father and son there are many points of resemblance. The father was one of the most prominent members of the Quebec bar in his day; the son is a rising member of the same bar. The father represented Portneuf in the Canadian parliament; the son represents the same constituency in the Quebec legislature. Lastly, the father was a member of the city council and mayor of Quebec; the son to-day is one of the councillors for St. Louis ward of that city, and a prominent member of the civic body, though still quite a young man. He was born at Quebec, in 1852. His mother, now deceased, before her marriage, was a Miss Kelly, and a member of the Drapeau family, seigneurs of Rimouski. His maternal grandfather was of Irish extraction, but the remainder of his parentage is French-Canadian on both sides. Educated in the classics at the Quebec Seminary and the Jesuits’ College, Montreal, he afterwards studied law, and was called to the bar in 1874, and soon acquired a considerable practice, together with the confidence of the public and the esteem of his professional brethren. He is one of the editors of the ‘Quebec Law Reports.’ In politics, Mr. Tessier, like his father while in public life, is what is termed a moderate Liberal, but almost from his youth he has been actively identified with all the struggles of the Liberal party in the Quebec district. He was secretary of the National Convention held in 1880, and was elected president of the Quebec Liberal Club after its reorganization for the last provincial and federal electoral campaign, which office he still holds. As such, he was selected as the party’s candidate to oppose ex-Mayor Brousseau, of Quebec, in Portneuf county, for the Legislative Assembly of the province, at the general election of October, 1886, and defeated his adversary, who had been the sitting member, by a very heavy majority. In the house, he is recognized as one of the staunchest supporters of the Mercier government, and has proved himself a most useful member. To his exertions Quebec was mainly indebted for its selection for the holding of the Provincial Exhibition of 1887, which was so great a success. Mr. Tessier is a member of the Church of Rome; and for many years past one of the principal officers of the St. Jean Baptiste Society, of Quebec. He is a director of the Lake St. John Railway Company, and a member of the Provincial Board of Arts. He is married to a daughter of Edmund Barnard, the well-known Q.C., of Montreal, and his two sisters are the wives respectively of the Hon. Alexander Chauveau, who was solicitor-general in the Joly administration, and is now police judge at Quebec, and of Lieut.-Col. Duchesnay, deputy adjutant-general for the Quebec military district.

Aikins, Hon. James Cox, P.C., Lieut.-Governor of Manitoba and Keewatin Territory, was born in the township of Toronto, Peel county, Ontario, on the 30th of March, 1823. His father, the late James Aikins, emigrated from the county of Monaghan, Ireland, to Philadelphia, in 1816, and after a residence of four years there he removed to Upper Canada, and took up a quantity of land in the first concession north of the Dundas road, in the township of Toronto. The subject of our sketch was the eldest son, and was brought up on his father’s farm, and was early inured to the hardships of rural life in Canada in those primitive times. He united with the Methodist body at an early age. He attended the public schools in the neighborhood of his home, and afterwards spent some time at the Upper Canada Academy, at Cobourg, which subsequently developed into Victoria College and University. At the first collegiate examination, which was held in 1843, he figured as one of the merit students. After completing his education he settled down on a farm in the county of Peel, a few miles from his paternal homestead. In 1845, soon after leaving college, he married Mary Elizabeth Jane Somerset, the daughter of a neighboring yeoman. In 1851 he was tendered the nomination as the representative of his native constituency in the Legislative Assembly, and declined, but at the general election held in 1854, he offered himself as a candidate on the Reform side, in opposition to the sitting member, George Wright, and was elected. Upon taking his seat he recorded his first vote against the Hincks-Morin administration, and thus participated in bringing about the downfall of that ministry. He voted for the secularization of the clergy reserves, and his voice was occasionally heard in support of measures relating to public improvements. In the election of 1861, owing to his action on the county town question, which excited keen sectional opposition, he was defeated by the late Hon. John Hillyard Cameron. The following year he was elected a member of the Legislative Council for the Home Division, comprising the counties of Peel and Halton. He continued to sit in the council so long as that body had an existence; and when it was swept away by confederation he was called to the Senate of the Dominion. On the 9th of December, 1867, he accepted office in the government of Sir John A. Macdonald, as secretary of state, and has ever since been a follower of that statesman. During his tenure of office the Dominion lands bureau was established—which has since extended until it has become an independent department of state under control of the minister of the interior. The Public Lands Act of 1872, is another measure which dates from Mr. Aikins’ term of office. The disclosure with reference to the sale of the Pacific Railway charter resulted, in November, 1873, in the overthrowing of the government. Upon Sir John A. Macdonald’s return to power in October, 1878, he again accepted office as secretary of state, and retained that position until the month of November, 1880, when there was a readjustment of portfolios, and he became minister of inland revenue—which he held until his resignation, 23rd May, 1882. On the 22nd September, 1882, he was appointed lieutenant-governor of the province of Manitoba, and Keewatin Territory. He is major of the 3rd battalion Peel Militia, and chairman of the Manitoba and North-West Loan Company.

Taschereau, Hon. Jean Thomas, LL.D., Quebec, late Judge of the Supreme Court of the Dominion of Canada, is a gentleman, the simple mention of whose name recalls a family famous in the political annals of Lower Canada, and which has given more eminent men to the church and bench than probably any other in the country. It has almost passed into a proverb among the French Canadians of the province of Quebec that “there is always a Taschereau on the bench.” As a matter of fact, three generations of the family have been represented on it, and five Taschereaus in all have exercised the highest judicial functions in the province or in the dominion. In the case of our distinguished subject not only was he himself a judge, but his father before him was a judge, his son after him is a judge of the Superior Court of the province, and another of his relatives, the Hon. Elzear Taschereau, is at present one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the Dominion. Still another member of the family, Hon. Andrée Taschereau, now deceased, was resident judge of the Superior Court in the Kamouraska district, and one of the most eminent jurists of his day. Others again have held the office of sheriff of the Beauce district; one is now a prominent member of the bar of that district, and was the representative of Beauce county in the Canadian House of Commons during the last parliament; and one, Lieutenant-Colonel Taschereau, holds one of the most important military commands in the Quebec district. But the judicial, political, and military distinction of the Taschereau family is altogether eclipsed by the lustre conferred upon it by the fact that the first Canadian wearer of the Roman purple was selected from among its members. His Eminence, Cardinal Taschereau, Archbishop of Quebec, is a brother of our subject, and the “bright particular star” whose elevation to the exalted dignity of a Prince of the Roman Catholic church, has made the name of Taschereau famous all over the civilized world. The family is also one of the oldest and most distinguished in Lower Canada, its founder there being Thomas Jacques Taschereau, of Touraine, France, who was a son of Christopher Taschereau, King’s counsellor, director of the mint and treasurer of the city of Tours, and who came to New France towards the beginning of the last century, was appointed by the French viceroy as treasurer of the marine, and in 1736 obtained from the French Crown the grant of a valuable seigniory along the banks of the river Chaudière in Beauce, P.Q. Our subject’s father was the Hon. Jean Thomas Taschereau, senior, long a prominent member of the parliament of Lower Canada, and one of the advocates and champions of constitutional liberty in that province, who suffered imprisonment for their opinions in 1810. He was afterwards raised to the dignity of puisne judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench for his native province, and distinguished himself as an able and upright magistrate. Our subject was one of his sons by his wife, Maria Panet, daughter of the late Hon. Jean Panet, first speaker of the Lower Canadian House of Assembly (an office which he held for twenty consecutive years), and was born in the city of Quebec, on the 12th December, 1814. He was educated at the Quebec Seminary, where, like his brother, the present cardinal, he greatly distinguished himself in different branches, taking the leading prizes, especially for Latin, mathematics, etc. On the completion of his classical course, he studied law with two of the most eminent local practitioners of the day, Hon. Henry Black, afterwards judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court at Quebec, and Andrew Stuart, Q.C., afterwards Her Majesty’s solicitor-general for Lower Canada, and was called to the bar of that province in 1836, subsequently following several law courses in Paris, France. On his return to Canada, he opened a law office in the city of Quebec, and for the next twenty years practised his profession with success and distinction. In 1855, he was honored by Laval University with the title of LL.D., and in September of the same year he was called by the government to act as assistant judge of the Superior Court in the place of one of the regular judges of that court, during the sitting of the special court formed under the act to abolish feudal rights and seignorial dues in Lower Canada. Twice afterwards, in 1858 and in 1860, in which last mentioned year he was also created a Q.C., was he honored by a similar mark of the government’s appreciation, and in 1865 he was definitely appointed to the bench as a puisne judge of the Superior Court, as successor to the Hon. A. N. Morin, deceased. On the 11th February, 1873, he mounted another rung of the judicial ladder, being appointed puisne judge of the Court of Queen’s Bench for the province of Quebec, and some two years later on, the 8th October, 1875, he was elevated to the still more exalted position of puisne judge of the Supreme Court of the Dominion, which he retained until the 19th October, 1878, when he resigned on account of ill-health, and retired on his well-earned pension, after having served the public in all nineteen years on the bench as a judge. Our subject enjoyed to the utmost the confidence of the bar and the people, as well for his scrupulous and painstaking character, as for the almost invariable soundness of his decisions. It is needless to say that his religion is the Roman Catholic. In the spring of 1887, the Roman Pontiff, Leo XIII., conferred on him the decoration or cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great. He has been twice married—firstly, in 1840, to Louise Adele, daughter of the late Hon. Amable Dionne, M.L.C., who died in 1861; and lastly in 1862, to Marie Josephine, daughter of the late Hon. R. E. Caron, second lieutenant-governor of the province of Quebec, and a sister of Sir A. R. Caron, Dominion minister of militia. He is the father of twelve children, ten of whom survive. His eldest son, Hon. Henri Thomas Taschereau, formerly Liberal M.P. for Montmagny, has been a judge of the Superior Court for the province of Quebec since 1878; and another son, by his second union, is now a rising member of the Quebec bar.

Morin, Eusebe, St. Hyacinthe, Quebec province, was born on the 14th of July, 1853. He is the son of François Morin, merchant, and Marguerite Maheux. At the age of ten years he entered the St. Hyacinthe Seminary, which he left after taking a classical course of education. At the age of sixteen years he entered as clerk with L. V. Sicotte, dry goods merchant, but after spending one year in this establishment he left, and entered into partnership with Mr. Lamoureux, and traded under the firm name of Lamoureux & Morin for about fifteen months, when he bought his partner out, and assumed the business himself. When he entered into this business, a friend lent him $800 to start with, and this money he honorably paid with interest about a year after he had received it. He continued alone in business until he was twenty-three years of age, in the meantime becoming the first merchant in St. Hyacinthe, in his line, thus proving what can be done by close attention to business. After this, and by the time he had reached his twenty-seventh year, he had established small wholesale and retail houses, trading under the various names of Morin & Lamothe, Morin & Dion, Morin & Robitaille, Morin & Brodeur, both in the city of St. Hyacinthe and the neighboring country. Being of delicate health, he was almost given up by the doctors, and was obliged to liquidate the firms in order to proceed to Europe for the benefit of his health. After an extensive tour through England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy, he returned to Canada with a large and varied assortment of European goods, and was thus enabled to re-establish his trade on a sound and more extensive basis than ever, creating the following firms:—Morin & Co., in the liquor trade; Morin & Laline, general store; Morin & Bergeron, dry goods, all in St. Hyacinthe, with a capital of $200,000, he being principal partner in all the above establishments. When thirty-two years of age, becoming tired of the retail trade, he sold to his partners his interest in all the stores he had established, with the object of embarking in real estate transactions, and in this he has proved equally successful. He has built one of the finest private residences in the city of St. Hyacinthe, and finds himself, at the age of thirty-three, the most important property owner in the county of St. Hyacinthe. He enjoys a good reputation, and his numerous partners and friends have reason to be thankful to him for his aid at various times. The city of St. Hyacinthe is also indebted to him for the erection of numerous blocks of magnificent stores, and several private residences. Although Mr. Morin is yet comparatively young, he is exceedingly popular in his district, and has been several times requested to enter public life, but has invariably declined, on the ground that he could be of greater use to his friends and the country at large, in promoting private and public enterprises. He is looked upon as the Vanderbilt of St. Hyacinthe.

MacDowall, Day Hort, Prince Albert, M.P. for Saskatchewan, North-West Territory, was born in 1850, at Carruth House, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He is the second son of Henry MacDowall, of Garthland, Renfrewshire, Scotland, vide “Nesbitt’s Heraldry.” Mr. MacDowall was educated at Windlesham, Surrey, England, and Trinity College, Glenalmond, Scotland. He was a captain in the Renfrewshire Rifle Volunteers from 1872 to 1879. He accompanied Gen. Middleton’s force through the Northwest rebellion of 1885, and took charge of the party dispatched by the general through the rebel district from Humboldt to Prince Albert. He was a member of the North-West Council for the district of Lorne, from June, 1883, to October, 1885; and was returned to Parliament, as the member for Saskatchewan, at the general election in 1887. He is a Conservative in politics. He was married August 12th, 1884, to Alice Maude Blanchard, daughter of Charles Blanchard, Truro, N.S. He is a member of the Manitoba Club, Winnipeg; Wanderers’ Club, Pall Mall, London, Eng., and Rideau Club, Ottawa, Ont.

Prévost, Oscar A., Brevet-Major, (late of the regiment Canadian artillery, then A and B batteries, permanent artillery), Quebec, was born in Montreal on the 9th of May, 1845. His father, Amable C. Prévost, was a descendant of an old French family of Anjou, (Prévost de la Boutèlière). He was a merchant of Montreal, very successful in business, leaving an estate of over half a million dollars. He died in February, 1872. His mother, Rosalind E. Bernard, was born in Montreal, educated at Notre Dame congregation, and was married to Amable C. Prévost, March, 1838. The subject of this sketch was educated at St. Mary’s College, Montreal, taking a classical course, including mathematics and natural philosophy; he afterwards studied law; was admitted to the bar of Lower Canada in October, 1866, and practised his profession until 1870. He joined, as lieutenant, the 4th battalion in the year 1865; served on the frontier during the Fenian raid of 1866; was transferred in 1870 to the Quebec rifle regiment of the North-West expeditionary force under Colonel (now General, Sir) Garnet Wolseley; remained stationed in the North-West till February, 1872, being transferred in July, 1872, to the School of Gunnery, Quebec, and gazetted to B battery as lieutenant with rank of captain; was adjutant of the School of Gunnery B battery, August, 1873, till February, 1880. He went to Woolwich, England, for a special course in the Royal Arsenal, and on his return was appointed superintendent of the government cartridge factory at Quebec, and still holds that appointment. In 1882 he was sent by the minister of militia and defence, Sir A. P. Caron, to England to purchase machinery required for a small ammunition factory to be erected in the government buildings in Quebec. The plans, specifications, alterations to buildings, placing machinery, including boilers and steam engines, and putting the whole plant in working order, was done under his immediate supervision, bringing forth his ability as a practical engineer, and his scientific attainments. This factory has now been at work since 1883. It produced 2,000,000 rounds of ball ammunition, in three months, during the North-West rebellion of 1885, and now supplies the whole Dominion with service ammunition. It can give employment to four hundred hands. He submitted to a board of artillery officers in September, 1886, a new projectile for light and heavy rifled guns, which increased the range and accuracy of guns in a remarkable degree. A foundry, in connection with the cartridge factory, was erected for the manufacture of these projectiles, in July, 1887, and the work now goes on daily. Thus two entirely novel industries have been started in Canada, and the military efficiency of the Dominion increased. In 1876 he travelled through France, Italy, Austria, Hungary and Germany, being authorized to visit the imperial arsenal at Vienna, and obtain information with regard to the new field ordnance and carriages at that time introduced into the Austrian service. Major Prévost was married on 25th May, 1874, to Louisa J., daughter of Hon. Juschereau Duchesnay, of Quebec, ex-senator for the division of Lassale, province of Quebec; seigneur of the seigniories of Fossambault and Gaudarville. Hon. Mr. Duchesnay’s father commanded a company of Voltigeurs under Colonel de Salaberry, his cousin, at the victorious battle of Chateauguay, in 1812. The Juschereau Duchesnay family were connected to Robert Giffard, first seigneur of Beauport, near Quebec, to whom this seigniory had been granted in 1635 by the “Compagnie de la Nouvelle France,” under authority of the French King. The Duchesnays inherited this seigniory in 1668, and they owned it for over two hundred years.

Champlain, Samuel de.—Standing on the summit of one of the rocky eminences at the mouth of the Saguenay, and looking back through the haze of two hundred and eighty-five years, we may descry two small sailing craft slowly making their way up the majestic stream which Jacques Cartier, sixty-eight years before, christened in honor of St. Lawrence. The vessels are French build, and have evidently just arrived from France. They are of very diminutive size for an ocean voyage, but are manned by hardy Breton mariners for whom the tempestuous Atlantic has no terrors. They are commanded by an enterprising merchant-sailor of St. Malo, who is desirous of pushing his fortunes by means of the fur trade, and who, with that end in view, has already more than once navigated the St. Lawrence as far westward as the mouth of the Saguenay. His name is Pontgravé. Like other French adventurers of his time, he is a brave and energetic man, ready to do, to dare, and, if need be, to suffer; but his primary object in life is to amass wealth, and to effect this object he is not over-scrupulous as to the means employed. On this occasion he has come over with instructions from Henry IV., King of France, to explore the St. Lawrence, to ascertain how far from its mouth navigation is practicable, and to make a survey of the country on its banks. He is accompanied on the expedition by a man of widely different mould; a man who is worth a thousand of such sordid, huckstering spirits; a man who unites with the courage and energy of a soldier a high sense of personal honor and a singleness of heart worthy of the Chevalier Bayard himself. To these qualities are added an absorbing passion for colonization, and a piety and zeal which would not misbecome a Jesuit missionary. He is poor, but what the poet calls “the jingling of the guinea” has no charms for him. Let others consume their souls in heaping up riches, in chaffering with the Indians for the skins of wild beasts, and in selling the same to the affluent traders in France. It is his ambition to rear the fleur-de-lis in the remote wilderness of the New World, and to evangelize the savage hordes by whom that world is peopled. The latter object is the most dear to his heart of all, and he has already recorded his belief that the salvation of one soul is of more importance than the founding of an empire. After such an exordium it is scarcely necessary to inform the student of history that the name of Pontgravé’s ally is Samuel De Champlain. He had already figured somewhat conspicuously in his country’s annals, but his future achievements were destined to outshine the events of his previous career, and to gain for him the merited title of “Father of New France.” He was born some time in the year 1567, at Brouage, a small seaport town in the province of Saintonge, on the west coast of France. Part of his youth was spent in the naval service, and during the wars of the League he fought on the side of the King, who awarded him a small pension and attached him to his own person. But Champlain was of too adventurous a turn of mind to feel at home in the confined atmosphere of a royal court, and soon languished for change of scene. Erelong he obtained command of a vessel bound for the West Indies, where he remained more than two years. During that time he distinguished himself as a brave and efficient officer. He became known as one whose nature partook largely of the romantic element, but who, nevertheless, had ever an eye to the practical. Several important engineering projects seem to have engaged his attention during his sojourn in the West Indies. Prominent among these was the project of constructing a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama, but the scheme was not encouraged, and ultimately fell to the ground. Upon his return to France he again dangled about the court for a few months, by which time he had once more become heartily weary of a life of inaction. With the accession of Henry IV. to the French throne the long religious wars which had so long distracted the country came to an end, and the attention of the government began to be directed to the colonization of New France—a scheme which had never been wholly abandoned but which had remained in abeyance since the failure of the expedition undertaken by the brothers Roberval, more than half a century before. Several new attempts were made at this time, none of which were very successful. The fur trade, however, held out great inducements to private enterprise, and stimulated the cupidity of the merchants of Dieppe, Rouen and St. Malo. In the heart of one of them something nobler than cupidity was aroused. In 1603, M. De Chastes, governor of Dieppe, obtained a patent from the King conferring upon him and several of his associates a monopoly of the fur trade of New France. To M. De Chastes the acquisition of wealth—of which he already had enough, and to spare—was a matter of secondary importance, but he hoped to make his patent the means of extending the French empire into the unknown regions of the far West. The patent was granted soon after Champlain’s return from the West Indies, and just as the pleasures of the court were beginning to pall upon him. He had served under De Chastes during the latter years of the war of the League, and the governor was no stranger to the young man’s skill, energy, and incorruptible integrity. De Chastes urged him to join the expedition, which was precisely of a kind to find favor in the eyes of an ardent adventurer like Champlain. The King’s consent having been obtained, he joined the expedition under Pontgravé, and sailed for the mouth of the St. Lawrence on the 15th of March, 1603. The expedition, as we have seen, was merely preliminary to more specific and extended operations. The ocean voyage, which was a tempestuous one, occupied more than two months, and they did not reach the St. Lawrence until the latter end of May. They sailed up as far as Tadousac, at the mouth of the Saguenay, where a little trading-post had been established four years before by Pontgravé and Chauvin. Here they cast anchor, and a fleet of canoes filled with wondering natives gathered round their little barques to sell peltries, and (unconsciously) to sit for Champlain for their portraits. After a short stay at Tadousac the leaders of the expedition, accompanied by several of the crew, embarked in a batteau and proceeded up the river past deserted Stadacona to the site of the Indian village of Hochelaga, discovered by Jacques Cartier in 1535. The village so graphically described by that navigator had ceased to exist, and the tribe which had inhabited it at the time of his visit had given place to a few Algonquin Indians. Our adventurers essayed to ascend the river still farther, but found it impossible to make headway against the rapids of St. Louis, which had formerly presented an insuperable barrier to Cartier’s westward progress. Then they retraced their course down the river to Tadousac, re-embarked on board their vessels, and made all sail for France. When they arrived there they found that their patron, De Chastes, had died during their absence, and that his company had been dissolved. Very soon afterwards, however, the scheme of colonization was taken up by the Sieur, de Monts, who entered into engagements with Champlain for another voyage to the New World. De Monts and Champlain set sail on the 7th of March, 1604, with a large expedition, and in due course reached the shores of Nova Scotia, then called Acadie. After an absence of three years, during which Champlain explored the coast as far southward as Cape Cod, the expedition returned to France. A good deal had been learned as to the topographical features of the country lying near the coast, but little had been done in the way of actual colonization. The next expedition was productive of greater results. De Monts, at Champlain’s instigation, resolved to found a settlement on the shores of the St. Lawrence. Two vessels were fitted up at his expense and placed under Champlain’s command, with Pontgravé as lieutenant of the expedition, which put to sea in the month of April, 1608, and reached the mouth of the Saguenay early in June. Pontgravé began a series of trading operations with the Indians at Tadousac, while Champlain proceeded up the river to fix upon an advantageous site for the projected settlement. This site he found at the confluence of the St. Charles with the St. Lawrence, near the place where Jacques Cartier had spent the winter of 1535-6. Tradition tells us that when Cartier’s sailors beheld the adjacent promontory of Cape Diamond they exclaimed, “Quel bec!”—(“What a beak!”)—which exclamation led to the place being called Quebec. The most probable derivation of the name, however, is the Indian word kebec, signifying a strait, which might well have been applied by the natives to the narrowing of the river at this place. Whatever may be the origin of the name, here it was that Champlain, on the 3rd of July, 1608, founded his settlement, and Quebec was the name which he bestowed upon it. This was the first permanent settlement of Europeans on the American continent, with the exception of those at St. Augustine, in Florida, and Jamestown, in Virginia. Champlain’s first attempts at settlement, as might be expected, were of a very primitive character. He erected rude barracks, and cleared a few small patches of ground adjacent thereto, which he sowed with wheat and rye. Perceiving that the fur trade might be turned to good account in promoting the settlement of the country, he bent his energies to its development. He had scarcely settled his little colony in its new home ere he began to experience the perils of his quasi-regal position. Notwithstanding the patent of monopoly held by his patron, on the faith of which his colonization scheme had been projected, the rights conferred by it began to be infringed by certain traders who came over from France and instituted a system of traffic with the natives. Finding the traffic exceedingly profitable, these traders erelong held out inducements to some of Champlain’s followers. A conspiracy was formed against him, and he narrowly escaped assassination. Fortunately, one of the traitors was seized by remorse, and revealed the plot before it had been fully carried out. The chief conspirator was hanged, and his accomplices were sent over to France, where they expiated their crime at the galleys. Having thus promptly suppressed the first insurrection within his dominions, Champlain prepared himself for the rigours of a Canadian winter. An embankment was formed above the reach of the tide, and a stock of provisions was laid in sufficient for the support of the settlement until spring. The colony, inclusive of Champlain himself, consisted of twenty-nine persons. Notwithstanding all precautions, the scurvy broke out among them during the winter. Champlain, who was endowed with a vigorous constitution, escaped the pest, but before the advent of spring the little colony was reduced to only nine persons. The sovereign remedy which Cartier had found so efficacious in a similar emergency was not to be obtained. That remedy was a decoction prepared by the Indians from a tree which they called Auneda—believed to have been a species of spruce—but the natives of Champlain’s day knew nothing of the remedy, from which he concluded that the tribe which had employed it on behalf of Cartier and his men had been exterminated by their enemies. With spring, succours and fresh immigrants arrived from France, and new vitality was imported into the little colony. Soon after this time, Champlain committed the most impolitic act of his life. The Hurons, Algonquins, and other tribes of the St. Lawrence and the Ottawa, resolved upon taking the war-path against their enemies, the Iroquois, or Five Nations—the boldest, fiercest, and most powerful confederacy known to Indian history. Champlain, ever since his arrival in the country, had done his utmost to win the favor of the natives with whom he was brought more immediately into contact, and he deemed that by joining them in opposing the Iroquois, who were a standing menace to his colony, he would knit the Hurons and Algonquins to the side of the King of France by permanent and indissoluble ties. To some extent he was right, but he underestimated the strength of the foe, an alliance with whom would have been of more importance than an alliance with all the other Indian tribes of New France. Champlain cast in his lot with the Hurons and Algonquins, and accompanied them on their expedition against their enemies. By so doing he invoked the deadly animosity of the latter against the French for all time to come. He did not foresee that by this one stroke of policy he was paving the way for a subsequent alliance between the Iroquois and the English. On May 28th, 1609, in company with his Indian allies, he started on the expedition, the immediate results of which were so insignificant—the remote results of which were so momentous. The war-party embarked in canoes, ascended the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Richelieu—then called the River of the Iroquois—and thence up the latter stream to the lake which Champlain then beheld for the first time, and which until that day no European eye had ever looked upon. This picturesque sheet of water was thenceforward called after him, and in its name his own is still perpetuated. The party held on their course to the head waters of the lake, near to which several Iroquois villages were situated. The enemy’s scouts received the intelligence of the approach of the invaders, and advanced to repel them. The opposing forces met in the forest on the south-western shore, not far from Crown Point, on the morning of the 30th of July. The Iroquois, two hundred in number, advanced to the onset. “Among them,” says Mr. Parkman, “could be seen several chiefs, conspicuous by their tall plumes. Some bore shields of wood and hide, and some were covered with a kind of armour made of tough twigs, interlaced with a vegetable fibre, supposed by Champlain to be cotton. The allies, growing anxious, called with loud cries for their champion, and opened their ranks that he might pass to the front. He did so, and advancing before his red companions-in-arms stood revealed to the astonished gaze of the Iroquois, who, beholding the warlike apparition in their path, stared in mute amazement. But his arquebuse was levelled; the report startled the woods, a chief fell dead, and another by his side rolled among the bushes. Then there arose from the allies a yell which, says Champlain, would have drowned a thunder-clap, and the forest was full of whizzing arrows. For a moment the Iroquois stood firm, and sent back their arrows lustily; but when another and another gunshot came from the thickets on their flank they broke and fled in uncontrollable terror. Swifter than hounds, the allies tore through the bushes in pursuit. Some of the Iroquois were killed, more were taken. Camp, canoes, provisions, all were abandoned, and many weapons flung down in the panic fight. The arquebuse had done its work. The victory was complete.” The victorious allies, much to the disgust of Champlain, tortured their prisoners in the most barbarous fashion, and returned to Quebec, taking with them fifty Iroquois scalps. Thus was the first Indian blood shed by the white man in Canada. The man who shed it was a European and a Christian, who had not even the excuse of provocation. This is a matter worth bearing in mind when we read of the frightful atrocities committed by the Iroquois upon the whites in after years. Champlain’s conduct on this occasion seems incapable of defence, and it was certainly a very grave error, considered simply as an act of policy. The error was bitterly and fiercely avenged, and for every Indian who fell on the morning of that 30th of July, in this, the first battle fought on Canadian soil between natives and Europeans, a ten-fold penalty was exacted. “Thus did New France rush into collision with the redoubted warriors of the Five Nations. Here was the beginning, in some measure doubtless the cause, of a long succession of murderous conflicts, bearing havoc and flame to generations yet unborn. Champlain had invaded the tiger’s den; and now, in smothered fury the patient savage would lie biding his day of blood.” Six weeks after the performance of this exploit, Champlain, accompanied by Pontgravé, returned to France. Upon his arrival at court he found De Monts there, trying to secure a renewal of his patent of monopoly, which had been revoked in consequence of loud complaints on the part of other French merchants who were desirous of participating in the profits arising from the fur trade. His efforts to obtain a renewal proving unsuccessful, De Monts determined to carry on his scheme of colonization unaided by royal patronage. Allying himself with some affluent merchants of Rochelle, he fitted out another expedition, and once more despatched Champlain to the New World. Champlain, upon his arrival at Tadousac, found his former Indian allies preparing for another descent upon the Iroquois, in which undertaking he again joined them; the inducement this time being a promise on the part of the Indians to pilot him up the great streams leading from the interior, whereby he hoped to discover a passage to the North Sea, and thence to China and the Indies. In this second expedition he was less successful than in the former one. The opposing forces met near the confluence of the Richelieu and St. Lawrence rivers, and though Champlain’s allies were ultimately victorious, they sustained a heavy loss, and he himself was wounded in the neck by an arrow. After the battle, the torture-fires were lighted, as was usual on such occasions, and Champlain for the first time was an eye-witness to the horrors of cannibalism. He soon afterwards began his preparations for an expedition up the Ottawa, but just as he was about to start on the journey, a ship arrived from France with intelligence that King Henry had fallen a victim to the dagger of Ravaillac. The accession of a new sovereign to the French throne might materially affect De Monts’ ability to continue his scheme, and Champlain once more set sail for France to confer with his patron. The late king, while deeming it impolitic to continue the monopoly in De Monts’ favor, had always countenanced the latter’s colonization schemes in New France; but upon Champlain’s arrival he found that with the death of Henry IV. De Monts’ court influence had ceased, and that his western scheme must stand or fall on its own merits. Champlain, in order to retrieve his patron’s fortunes as far as might be, again returned to Canada in the following spring, resolved to build a trading post far up the St. Lawrence, where it would be easily accessible to the Indian hunters on the Ottawa. The spot selected was near the site of the former village of Hochelaga, near the confluence of the two great rivers of Canada. The post was built on the site now occupied by the hospital of the Grey Nuns of Montreal, and even before its erection was completed a horde of rival French traders appeared on the scene. This drove Champlain once more back to France, but he soon found that the ardor of De Monts for colonization had cooled, and that he was not disposed to concern himself further in the enterprise. Champlain, being thus left to his own resources, determined to seek another patron, and succeeded in enlisting the sympathy of the Count de Soissons, who obtained the appointment of lieutenant-general of New France, and invested Champlain with the functions of that office as his deputy. The count did not long survive, but Henry de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, succeeded to his privileges, and continued Champlain in his high office. In the spring of 1613 Champlain again betook himself to Canada, and arrived at Quebec early in May. Before the end of the month he started on his long deferred tour of western exploration. Taking with him two canoes, containing an Indian and four Frenchmen, he ascended the Ottawa in the hope of reaching China and Japan by way of Hudson’s Bay, which had been discovered by Hendrick Hudson only three years before. In undertaking this journey Champlain had been misled by a French impostor called Nicholas Vignan, who professed to have explored the route far inland beyond the head waters of the Ottawa, which river, he averred, had its source in a lake connected with the North Sea. The enthusiastic explorer, relying upon the good faith of Vignan, proceeded westward to beyond Lake Coulange, and after a tedious and perilous voyage, stopped to confer with Tessouat, an Indian chief, whose tribe inhabited that remote region. This potentate, upon being apprised of the object of their journey, undeceived Champlain as to Vignan’s character for veracity, and satisfied him that the Frenchman had never passed further west than Tessouat’s own dominions. Vignan, after a good deal of prevarication, confessed that his story was false, and that what the Indian Chief had stated was a simple fact. Champlain, weary and disgusted, abandoned his exploration, and returned to Quebec, leaving Vignan with the Indians in the wilderness of the Upper Ottawa. His next visit to France, which took place during the summer of the same year, was fraught with important results to the colony. A new company was formed under the auspices of the Prince of Condé, and a scheme was laid for the propagation of the gospel among the Indians by means of Recollet missionaries to be sent out from France for the purpose. These, who were the first priests who settled in Canada, came out with Champlain in May, 1615. A province was assigned to each of them, and they at once entered upon the duties of their respective mission. One of them settled among the Montagnais, near the mouth of the Saguenay; two of them remained at Quebec; and the fourth, whose name was Le Caron, betook himself to the far western wilds. Champlain then entered upon a more extended tour of westward exploration than any he had hitherto undertaken. Accompanied by an interpreter and a number of Algonquins as guides, he again ascended the Ottawa, passed the Isle of Allumettes, and thence to Lake Nipissing. After a short stay here he continued his journey, and descended the stream since known as French River, into the inlet of Lake Huron, now called Georgian Bay. Paddling southward, past the innumerable islands on the eastern coast of the bay, he landed near the present site of Penetanguishene, and thence followed an Indian trail leading through the ancient country of the Hurons, now forming the northern part of the county of Simcoe, and the north-eastern part of the county of Grey. This country contained seventeen or eighteen villages, and a population, including women and children, of about twenty thousand. One of the villages visited by Champlain, called Cahiague, occupied a site near the present town of Orillia. At another village, called Carhagouha, some distance farther west, the explorer found the Recollet friar Le Caron, who had accompanied him from France, only a few months before, as above mentioned. And here, on the 12th of August, 1615, Le Caron celebrated, in Champlain’s presence, the first mass ever heard in the wilderness of western Canada. After spending some time in the Huron country, Champlain accompanied the natives on an expedition against their hereditary foes, the Iroquois, whose domain occupied what is now the central and western part of the State of New York. Crossing Lake Couchiching, and coasting down the north-eastern shore of Lake Simcoe, they made their way across country to the Bay of Quinté, thence into Lake Ontario, and thence into the enemy’s country. Having landed, they concealed their canoes in the woods and marched inland. On the 10th of October, they came to a Seneca^[7] village, on or near a lake which was probably Lake Canandaigua. The Hurons attacked the village, but were repulsed by the fierce Iroquois, Champlain himself being several times wounded in the assault. The invading war-party then retreated and abandoned the campaign, placing their wounded in the centre, while armed warriors guarded the front and rear, returning to where they had hidden their canoes, in which they embarked and made the best of their way back across Lake Ontario, where the party broke up. The Hurons had promised Champlain that if he would accompany them on their expedition against the Iroquois, they would afterwards furnish him with an escort back to Quebec. This promise they now declined to make good. Champlain’s prestige as an invincible champion was gone, and, wounded and dispirited, he was compelled to accompany them back to their country near Lake Simcoe, where he spent the winter in the lodge of Durantal, one of their chiefs. Upon his return to Quebec in the following year, he was welcomed as one risen from the dead. Hitherto, Champlain’s love of adventure had led him to devote more attention to exploration than to the consolidation of his power in New France. He determined to change his policy in this respect, and crossed over to France to induce a larger emigration. In July, 1620, he returned with Madame de Champlain, who was received with great demonstrations of respect and affection by the Indians upon her arrival at Quebec. Champlain found that the colony had rather retrograded than advanced during his absence, and for some time after his return various causes contributed to retard its prosperity. At the end of the year, 1621,^[8] the European population of New France numbered only forty-eight persons. Rival trading companies continued to fight for the supremacy in the colony, and any man less patient and persevering than the Father of New France, would have abandoned his schemes in despair. This untoward state of things continued until 1627, when an association, known to history by the name of “The Company of the One Hundred Associates,” was formed under the patronage of the great Cardinal Richelieu. The association was invested with the vice-royalty of New France and Florida, together with very extensive auxiliary privileges, including a monopoly of the fur trade, the right to confer titles and appoint judges, and generally to carry on the government of the colony. In return for these truly vice-regal privileges the company undertook to send out a large number of colonists, and to provide them with the necessaries of life for a term of three years, after which land enough for their support and grain wherewith to plant it was to be given them. Champlain himself was appointed governor. This great company was scarcely organized before war broke out between France and England. The English resolved upon the conquest of Canada, and sent out a fleet to the St. Lawrence, under the command of Sir David Kertk. The fleet having arrived before Quebec, its commander demanded from Champlain a surrender of the place, and as the governor’s supply of food and ammunition was too small to enable him to sustain a siege, he signed a capitulation and surrendered. He then hastened to France, where he influenced the cabinet to stipulate for the restoration of Canada to the French Crown, in the articles of peace which were shortly afterwards negotiated between the two powers. In 1632, this restoration was effected, and next year Champlain again returned in the capacity of governor. From this time forward he strove to promote the prosperity of the colony by every means in his power. Among the means whereby he zealously strove to effect this object, was the establishment of Jesuit missions for the conversion of the Indians. Among other missions so established was that in the far western Huron country, around which the Relations des Jesuites have cast such a halo of romance. The Father of New France did not live to gather much fruit from the crop which he had sown. His life of incessant fatigue at last proved too much even for his vigorous frame. After an illness which lasted for ten weeks, he died on Christmas Day, 1635, at the age of sixty-eight. His beautiful young wife, who had shared his exile for four years, returned to France. But few particulars have been preserved with reference to Madame de Champlain’s life. Her maiden name was Helen Boullé, and she was the sister of a friend and fellow-navigator of her husband’s. After her return to France she renounced the Protestant faith, and became a devout Roman Catholic. Having resolved upon adopting a conventual life, she became an Ursuline nun, under the name of Mother Helen de St. Augustine. She founded a convent at Meaux, in which she immured herself during the remainder of her life. She survived her husband nearly nineteen years, and died on the 20th of December, 1654, at the age of fifty-six. There was no issue of the marriage, and the patrimony descended to a cousin of the founder of New France. Champlain’s body was interred in the vaults of a little Recollet Church in the Lower Town, Quebec city. This church was subsequently burned to the ground, and its very site was not certainly known until recent times. In the year 1867, some workmen were employed in laying water-pipes beneath the flight of stairs called “Breakneck Steps,” leading from Mountain Hill to Little Champlain street. Under a grating at the foot of the steps, they discovered the vaults of the old Recollet Church, with the remains of the Father of New France enclosed.

Lacerte, Elie, M.D., Three Rivers, was born on the 15th November, 1821, at Yamachiche, county of St. Maurice, district of Three Rivers, province of Quebec. He is a son of Pierre Lacerte, farmer, of the same place, who was born 11th September, 1792, and died 29th April, 1885, in the suburb of Three Rivers. His grandfather emigrated from the city of Angers, France, in 1671. In 1812 this gentleman enlisted as lieutenant in the Canadian militia, under the late Lieut.-Colonel C. B. A. Gugy, and served up to 1815. On his return he married Louise Blais, of Yamachiche. After a classical course at Nicolet College, Elie Lacerte, the subject of our sketch, began the study of medicine at Three Rivers, and in 1843 went to continue them at the University of Harvard, Cambridge, Mass., where he graduated doctor of medicine on the 5th of March, 1845. He practised as a physician in Boston for some time, then returning to Yamachiche on the 19th November, 1847, where he continued to practice. On the 26th June, 1853, he was appointed justice of the peace for the district of Three Rivers; and in March, 1857, was appointed as postmaster of his town. In 1864 the Post-Office department entrusted him with the conveyance of mails from Montreal to Three Rivers, and this service he faithfully performed up to 1868, when he was elected member of the House of Commons for the county of St. Maurice. In 1872 he was re-elected by acclamation, and in the following session he presented the address in answer to the speech from the throne, but in 1874 he was defeated on the Pacific Scandal question. In 1875 he was elected to a seat in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, and he sat in this house until the 2nd of March, 1878, when the De Boucherville cabinet was dismissed by Lieut.-Gov. Le Tellier. He then withdrew from active public life, without, however, becoming indifferent to the success of the Liberal-Conservative party to which he always belonged. On the 13th October, 1886, he accepted the agency of the lands and forests of the Crown, in the district of St. Maurice, and that position he still holds. Some years ago Dr. Lacerte commenced a mercantile business, and succeeded very well, but growing tired of this kind of life, in 1884 he handed the business over to one of his sons, who has successfully conducted it ever since. In religion the doctor is a Roman Catholic. He married, 1848, Louise Lamy, and by her has had eleven children, six sons and five daughters. Four sons are still living, and the eldest, Arthur, succeeded his father in 1868 as postmaster.

Kerr, William Warren Hastings, Q.C., Montreal, was born at Three Rivers, in November, 1826. He was the son of James Hastings Kerr, a respected land agent of Quebec. His grandfather, a distinguished English barrister, settled at Quebec in 1797, and was appointed by Imperial commission as judge of the Vice Admiralty Court at Quebec, on the 19th August, 1797; appointed judge of the King’s Bench, in 1807; called to the Executive Council in 1812; to the Legislative Council in 1821, and later on was speaker of the Legislative Council. Mr. Kerr received his early education at Lundy’s College, Quebec, and ultimately he proceeded to Queen’s College, Kingston, and at both institutions his love of legal studies was made conspicuous. He completed his legal studies at Quebec, first with Mr. (later on judge) Jean Chabot, and lastly with Mr. (now Sir) Andrew Stuart, chief justice, S.C. On the 1st May, 1854, he entered into partnership at Quebec with J. M. Le Moine, under the style of Kerr & Le Moine. In May, 1858, this partnership having been dissolved, he entered into partnership with Archibald Campbell, an old friend and fellow student. After practising with success for a few years at Quebec, under the well remembered style of Campbell & Kerr, he sought in Montreal a wider field for his splendid talents. The silk gown of a Queen’s counsel was conferred upon him in 1873, and McGill University granted him the degree of D.C.L. in the same year. He was dean of the Faculty of Law in McGill University and professor of International Law. He was elected bâtonnier of the bar in 1878. In politics, Mr. Kerr was always of a markedly independent turn of mind, and it is generally conceded that if he had taken a more decided position in the political world he would have been elevated to the bench, which he would have ornamented. Twice he unsuccessfully contested parliamentary seats, once running against Sir John Rose in Huntingdon, in the first parliament; and secondly against the late H. A. Nelson for the Quebec legislature. Mr. Kerr’s position at the Montreal bar was one of the very foremost. In every branch of law, civil, criminal, international and constitutional, his opinion was generally regarded as final. Among the prominent trials in which he has figured may be noted the case of the St. Albans’ raiders and the Consolidated Bank; in the latter he defended the directors and secured their final acquittal. His contention as to the status of lieutenant-governors was accepted as final in the famous Letellier case. The news of his death on 12th February, 1888, was received with the deepest regret by his confrères at the bar, and the courts were adjourned out of respect to his memory, in order that the members of the bar might attend his funeral in a body. Hon. Mr. Justice Davidson, at the opening of the Superior Court, in speaking of the death of Mr. Kerr, said: “During the years that I led in the Crown business of this district, there were few great cases in which he was not retained. As a consequence, I had many opportunities of being impressed with his deep knowledge of the principles and intricacies of criminal jurisprudence, his fertility of resource and his subtle powers as a cross examiner. On the civil side of the courts he also occupied a notable position. It is not often that the same mind achieves so large a mastery over two so dissimilar systems of laws. During my earlier practice I often turned to him for counsel, and it was given with a kindliness and sympathy which I have never forgotten. In later years our relations went much beyond those of an ordinary professional intimacy. Such a connection cannot end forever without personal sorrow, compelling the utterance of this more than formal eulogium to his attainments and character. And not only is the Queen’s counsel dead, a husband and father of rarely sweet and affectionate qualities is also to be buried out of our sight.” He was married to a daughter of the Rev. Mr. Arnold, by whom he had two children.