David Allison, signed as David Allison
DAVID ALLISON, M.A., LL.D.,
SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION FOR THE PROVINCE OF NOVA SCOTIA.
Doctor Allison was born at Newport, Hants County, Nova Scotia, on the 3rd of July, 1836. By both lines of descent he belongs to that thrifty Scoto-Irish stock to which the central counties of Nova Scotia are largely indebted for their progress. On the paternal side he belongs to a family which has displayed much aptitude for public affairs, his grandfather and father both having occupied seats in the Provincial Legislature. His brother, Mr. W. Henry Allison, after occupying a seat in the same Body for several terms, at present represents the county of Hants in the House of Commons.
His preliminary education was received at the Provincial Academy at Halifax—since re-organized and developed into Dalhousie College—and at the Wesleyan Academy, Sackville, N.B. His school-boy days at Halifax were contemporaneous with a period of great political excitement, and a race of orators rarely surpassed in any colonial legislature—Howe, Johnston, Young, Uniacke—enlivened the Assembly room of the Province with their eloquence. Frequent attendance on the discussions waged by these masters of debate gave to the young student's mind a strong and permanent leaning towards political and constitutional studies. At Sackville, where he studied four consecutive years, the basis of a broad and liberal training was firmly laid. Twenty-five years ago, institutions of learning really doing educational work of a high order were not so numerous in the Maritime Provinces as they now are, and the Academy at Sackville, distinguished for its high standard and energetic methods, attracted patronage, not only from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but from Newfoundland and "the vexed Bermoothes." During his connection with this school, he was thus brought into contact with many young men who have since won distinction in Provincial life. His academic career ended, he was determined (we suppose) by denominational proclivities to seek University training and honours at the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., U.S., where his career was in a high degree successful and brilliant. For some years after graduation, in 1859, he filled the post of classical instructor at Sackville, first in the Academy, and from 1862 to 1869 in the Mount Allison College, an institution organized in that year under charter obtained from the Legislature of New Brunswick. The resignation of the Presidency of the College by the Rev. Dr. Pickard, in 1869, gave its Board of Governors an opportunity of showing their appreciation of his scholarship and character. He was unanimously elected President, and thenceforward for nine years devoted himself with assiduity and success to the duties of that position.
The work of a classical teacher, especially in a country college, does not attract much public attention, and however effectively performed cannot furnish much material for biographical remark. It is enough to say that Professor Allison taught the classics with great efficiency, illuminating the otherwise dull page with the illustrative light of history, philosophy and literature. On his accession to the Presidency of the College he exchanged the Chair of Classics for that of Mental Science, and his lectures on that subject as delivered to successive classes would, if published, secure for their author no mean reputation as an acute and independent thinker. During the nine years of his Presidency at Sackville he bore a heavy load of responsibility. The work of endowing the College and generally improving its financial condition was no light one. The intense intercollegiate competition of the Lower Provinces rendered it necessary to infuse new vigour into the teaching staff. The unsettled condition of the "higher education" question, and the somewhat feverish state of the public mind regarding it, obliged one occupying his position to be on the alert, ready with pen or voice to attack or defend as circumstances might require. It is sufficient to affirm, that when in 1878 he resigned his office for a new sphere of responsibility, no College in the Maritime Provinces had for its years a better record than his, and no college officer a wider or more enviable reputation for varied scholarship and progressive tendencies of mind.
On a vacancy arising in the office of Superintendent of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia in 1877, all eyes were turned to him. Enjoying to a flattering extent the confidence of the friends of the Sackville Institution, he naturally hesitated, but finally yielded when appeals from the leaders of public opinion on all sides were joined to the independent attractions of the offered post. The two years during which he has administered the educational affairs of the Province show clearly that he possesses a delicate appreciation of the elements of the problem which he is required to solve. Reforms should, if possible, follow one another in logical sequence. If the new Superintendent is moving too slowly for some and too fast for others, he is probably moving as all his really sincere and well-informed critics would wish him to do, were their opportunities for taking in the whole situation as good as his. Since his appointment he has aroused throughout the Province a fresh interest in the cause of popular instruction, not only by his masterly reports, but by the vigorous use of his abundant gift of public speaking.