THE HON. ADAM WILSON.
Judge Wilson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 22nd of September, 1814. He received his education there, and emigrated to this country in the summer of 1830, when he had not quite completed his sixteenth year. He settled in the township of Trafalgar, in the county of Halton, Canada West, where he took charge of the mills and store of his maternal uncle, the late Mr. George Chalmers, who represented the constituency in the Legislative Assembly. He developed high capacity for mercantile pursuits, in which he was engaged for somewhat more than three years. He, however, resolved to devote himself to the legal profession, and in the month of January, 1834, was articled to the late Hon. Robert Baldwin Sullivan, a gentleman whose name is well known in the Parliamentary and Judicial history of this Province, and who was then a partner of the Hon. Robert Baldwin, the style of the firm being Baldwin & Sullivan. Mr. Wilson completed his studies in that office, and in Trinity Term of the year 1839 was called to the Bar of Upper Canada. On the 1st of January, 1840, he entered into partnership with Mr. Baldwin, and the connection between them endured until the end of 1849, when Mr. Baldwin retired from professional pursuits. On the 28th of November, 1850, he was appointed a Queen's Counsel by the Baldwin-Lafontaine Government, contemporaneously with the present Judges Hagarty and Gwynne, and with the late Judge Connor and Chancellor Vankoughnet. During the same year he became a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada.
He soon afterwards began to take a warm interest in the municipal affairs of Toronto, and in 1855 was elected an Alderman of the city. In 1859 he was Mayor of Toronto, and was the first Chief Magistrate elected by popular suffrage. In 1856 he was appointed a Commissioner for the consolidation of the public general statutes of Canada and Upper Canada respectively.
In politics Mr. Wilson was a member of the Reform Party, and had frequently been importuned to allow himself to be put in nomination for a seat in the Legislature. Being much occupied with professional and municipal affairs he had declined such importunities, but upon the death of Mr. Hartman, the member for the North Riding of the county of York in the Canadian Assembly, on the 29th of November, 1859, that constituency was left unrepresented, and Mr. Wilson, being again pressed to enter political life, contested the representation of North York, and was returned at the head of the poll. He took his seat in the House as an avowed opponent of the Cartier-Macdonald Administration. He was again returned by the same constituency at the next general election. In 1861 he was an unsuccessful candidate for the representation of West Toronto. Upon the formation of the Sandfield Macdonald-Sicotte Administration, in May, 1862, he accepted office therein as Solicitor-General, and was reëlected by his constituents upon presenting himself to them. He held the portfolio of Solicitor-General, with a seat in the Executive Council, until the month of May, 1863. On the 11th of the month he was elevated to a seat on the Judicial Bench as a Puisné Judge of the Court of Queen's Bench for Upper Canada. Three months later (on the 24th of August) he was transferred to the Court of Common Pleas, where he remained until Easter Term, 1868, when he was again appointed to the Queen's Bench, as successor to the Hon. John Hawkins Hagarty, who had been appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. In 1871 Judge Wilson was appointed a member of the Law Reform Commission. In the month of November, 1878, he was himself appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, a position which he now occupies.
While at the Bar he was regarded as second to no man in the Province in certain branches of his profession; and his reputation has rather grown than diminished since his elevation to the Bench. His learning, judicial acumen and perfect impartiality are acknowledged by the entire profession of this Province, as well as by his brethren on the Bench.
He is the author of a work entitled "A Sketch of the Office of Constable," published in Toronto in 1861. Early in his professional career he married a daughter of the late Mr. Thomas Dalton, who was for many years editor and proprietor of the Patriot, a once well-known newspaper published in Toronto.