Shakespeare, Noah, General Agent, Victoria, British Columbia, M.P., for Victoria, was born at Brierley Hill, Staffordshire, England, on the 26th of January, 1839. His parents were Noah and Hannah Shakespeare. The father was a distant relation of William Shakespeare, the bard of Avon. Mr. Shakespeare received his education in the public schools of his native place. He left school at an early age, and being of an independent turn of mind, and anxious to get on in the world, he worked as hard and as long hours, as any lad in England. Having heard of British Columbia as a field in which a young man might get on, he determined to try his fortune in that far-off land, and accordingly left England, and landed in Victoria, on the 10th of January, 1863, and has since that time been a resident of the province. Arriving like many another poor lad in Canada, without scarcely a penny in his pocket, he availed himself of the first job that offered, namely, that of a place in the Vancouver collieries. Here he faithfully performed the duties assigned to him for some years, until he saw an opportunity of bettering his condition. He then moved to Victoria city, and began to climb the path which has since led to distinction. His first public position was that of councillor, and being a workingman himself, his efforts during the four years he was in the council, were always directed in favour of the workingman. In 1882, he was elected mayor of the city, by a large majority of the ratepayers, and never, it may be said, had Victoria a better chief magistrate, and its affairs better managed than under his administration. This same year he was elected president of the Mechanics’ Institute; and at the general election of 1882, he was sent to Ottawa, to represent Victoria in the House of Commons; and again re-elected to the same position at the general election in the spring of 1887. In 1885, Mr. Shakespeare was elected to the presidency of the British Columbia Agricultural Association; and in 1886, he was also made president of the British Columbia Mutual Fire Insurance Company, of which he was the principal organizer in Victoria. He is a friend of all movements adopted for the good of his race. He was president of the Anti-Chinese Association of Victoria, in 1879; was elected grand worthy chief of the Grand Lodge of Good Templars of Washington Territory and British Columbia, in 1877; again elected to the same position in 1878; and in 1886, he filled the honourable office of president of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Victoria. In 1884 he introduced and succeeded in getting carried a resolution in favor of restricting Chinese immigration into the Dominion of Canada. He is a justice of peace for the Province of British Columbia. In politics, he is a Liberal-Conservative; and in religion, an adherent of the Methodist church. On December 26th, 1869, he was married to Eliza Jane Pearson.
Fielding, Hon. William Stevens, Premier of Nova Scotia, and M.P.P. for the city and county of Halifax, was born at Halifax, on the 24th of November, 1848, and is of English descent. He was educated in his native city, and has devoted the greater part of his life to journalism. At the age of sixteen he entered the office of the Morning Chronicle, in Halifax, the leading Liberal paper in Nova Scotia, as a clerk, and gradually worked through the reportorial and editorial departments to the position of managing editor, which office he resigned in 1884, when called upon to fill a high position in the government of his native province. During these twenty years, he did not confine his writing exclusively to his own province, but contributed to various journals abroad. For fourteen years he was connected with the Toronto Globe, as Nova Scotia correspondent. In 1882, at a convention of the Liberal party held at Halifax, after the resignation of the Thompson government, the positions of premier and provincial secretary were offered to Mr. Fielding, but he declined the honor. He, however, entered the administration of the Hon. W. T. Pipes, on the 22nd of December, of the same year, without a portfolio, having previously declined the offer of a seat in it. In May, 1884, he resigned. On the retirement of the Hon. W. T. Pipes, on the 15th of July following, he was called upon to reorganize the cabinet, which he succeeded in doing, and became premier and provincial secretary, on the 28th of July, 1884, and this position he still holds. He was first returned to the House of Assembly at the general election held in 1882, re-elected on his accepting office, 20th of August, 1884, and again at the last general election in 1886. The Hon. Mr. Fielding is a Liberal in politics, and favors the withdrawal of the Maritime provinces from the Canadian confederation, and the formation of a Maritime union. As will be seen, he has for the past five years played an important part in the politics of his country, and being yet a comparatively young man, there is yet a brilliant future before him. In religion, he is attached to the Baptist church. On the 7th of September, 1876, he was married to Hester, daughter of Thomas A. Rankine, of St. John, New Brunswick.
Hetherington, George A., M.D., L.M. (Dublin), St. John, New Brunswick, was born at Johnston, New Brunswick, on the 17th March, 1851. His father, James Grierson Hetherington, was of English descent, his father (the grandfather of the subject of our sketch) having been born in England, and came out to St. John, N.B., about seventy years ago, and established a merchant tailoring business there, which was one of the first in that then very young and small city. Mary Jane Clark, his mother, was a native of New Brunswick, and of U. E. loyalist descent. George A. Hetherington received the rudiments of his education at the place of his birth; then he went to the Normal School at St. John, N.B., where he took a teacher’s certificate in 1860, and taught school for a short time. Subsequently, for two years, he attended the Baptist Seminary at Fredericton, N.B., and then spent a year in the medical department of the University of Michigan, United States. He then received an appointment in the Washtenaw Almshouse Hospital and Insane Asylum, as resident physician, and this office he held for a year, during which period he took a partial course, after the first year’s full course, in the same university. He then went to Cincinnati, where he further prosecuted his studies in medicine and surgery in the General Hospital and in the Cincinnati College, and graduated M.D., in 1875. Returning to his native country he successfully practised his profession for nearly five years, and then went to Great Britain. Here he spent a short period in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and then went to Dublin, where he took the full qualification of Rotunda Hospital for Women (Lic.Mid.); also a special course certificate for diseases of women and children. After this Dr. Hetherington received an appointment in the same hospital as assistant clinical instructor and clerk, having charge of an extensive maternity department. At the close of his engagement he returned to St. John, N.B., in 1882, and began a general practice, and is now one of the leading practitioners of that city. He is a licentiate of the Council of Physicians and Surgeons of New Brunswick; and a member of the British Medical Association. In 1871 he attended the Military School at Fredericton, N.B., and was the recipient of a second-class certificate. In 1877 he was appointed coroner for the county of Queens, and, after removing to St. John, surgeon to the St. John Firemen’s Mutual Relief Association in 1885. The doctor is also a past chancellor of the Knights of Pythias; supreme vice-chief ranger of the Independent Order of Foresters, and past high physician of the same order, and a member of the brotherhood of Freemasons. He has travelled considerably, having visited all the important points in the Maritime provinces, Quebec, Ontario, the Eastern States, New York, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Great Britain and Ireland. In politics he is a Liberal; and in religion a Baptist. He was married on 5th September, 1876, to Sybil McIntyre, of Sussex, New Brunswick.
Wallace, Joseph James, Truro, Nova Scotia, Superintendent of the Halifax and St. John District of the Intercolonial Railway, was born in Albert county, New Brunswick, on the 20th of April, 1847. His parents were David and Mary Wallace. Mr. Wallace received his education in the High School, Hillsboro’, New Brunswick. He entered the service of the European and North-American Railway Company, on the 25th of May, 1865, and continued in its service until November, 1872, during which period he filled the various positions of telegraph operator at Salisbury, New Brunswick; clerk and telegraph operator in the superintendent’s office, at St. John, New Brunswick; station master, telegraph operator, and postmaster, at Salisbury, New Brunswick; assistant accountant in the superintendent’s office, at St. John, New Brunswick; and in November, 1872, and on the absorption of the above railway by the Intercolonial Railway Company, he was made auditor of the latter company. This office he held until May, 1883, when he was appointed to the more important position of superintendent of the Halifax and St. John district, which office he holds to-day. Mr. Wallace has shewn by his integrity, industry, and perseverance, what a young man can do when he once determines to rise in his profession. In 1870, he joined the Masonic brotherhood, and is now a past master of his parent lodge. In May 26th, 1868, he was married to Ruth M. Hopper, and the fruit of this union has been five children, three of whom survive.
Loranger, Hon. Louis Onesime, one of the judges of the Superior Court of the province of Quebec, with place of residence in Montreal, was born at Ste. Anne d’Yamachiche, on the 10th April, 1837. He is the son of Joseph Loranger and Marie Louise Dugal, and a brother to the late Hon. Justice T. J. J. Loranger, commandeur of the Order of Pius IX., who died in 1885; to the late Rev. C. A. Loranger, and to J. M. Loranger, Queen’s counsel, now practising at the bar of Montreal. Justice Loranger was educated at the College of Montreal, where he went through a brilliant course of classical studies, and was admitted to the bar of the province of Quebec on the 3rd of May, 1858. He at once entered into partnership with his two brothers, the late Hon. T. J. J. Loranger, who was then a member of the Macdonald-Cartier administration, and J. M. Loranger, Q.C. He continued in active practice of the law until the 5th of August, 1882, when he was appointed to the puisné judgeship of the Superior Court of Quebec, the position he now holds. In February, 1868, Judge Loranger was elected an alderman of the city of Montreal, and twice re-elected by acclamation. In 1874, the citizens of Montreal, wishing to recognize the important services he had rendered the city, elected him vice-president of the St. Jean Baptiste Society, and president of the committee entrusted with the organization of the celebration of the Fête Nationale of that year. The sister societies had been invited to co-operate, and the invitation met with a hearty response from all parts of the American union and the Dominion of Canada, delegates being sent from every society on the continent, and in some cases societies themselves coming to Montreal with their full membership. The idea of the St. Jean Baptiste Society, as founded by the late Ludger Duvernay, in 1834, had been to form a tie of cohesion among the diverse groups of French Canadians who were divided among themselves, and bring them all under one banner, with “Our Religion and Our Language” as motto. Mr. Duvernay, the first journalist of note among the French, was the first to understand that if the systematic course of petty persecution which obtained in his days were not stopped, the French Canadian element would soon be lost in the flood of British emigration then setting in towards this fair country. The Briton, with his keen commercial insight and his eminent qualities as a colonist, had discovered that the land which Voltaire had described as “a few acres of snow-covered ground” had a future before it, and he at once resolved to make the country what it is to-day. The St. Jean Baptiste Society struggled on for several years with a slight membership and scanty financial resources until 1860, when a determined effort was made to place it on an efficient footing. Then with the help of such men as Cartier, Langevin, L. O. David, the Lorangers, and scores of others who were carried forward by the enthusiasm and patriotic fire of their leaders, it took gigantic strides, and to-day it numbers over one hundred thousand members. In 1874, Mr. L. O. Loranger, as a member of the executive committee of the society, rendered great services. In July, 1875, Judge Loranger presented himself for the first time to the electorate of the county of Laval, and was sent to the Legislative Assembly as a supporter of the de Boucherville administration. An unswerving adherent of the Conservative party, he was soon recognized as one of its leaders, and considered one of the strongest debaters in the Assembly. He took a leading part in the discussion on the Letellier coup d’état. He was re-elected three times consecutively by acclamation in his county. After the defeat of the Joly administration he was offered the portfolio of attorney-general, which he accepted (November, 1879), and retained until his elevation to the bench in 1882. The codification of the Provincial statutes and the judicial reforms now being completed (1887), were commenced when he was attorney-general under the Chapleau-Loranger administration. Judge Loranger is a hard worker, having in the midst of his parliamentary duties attended to the needs of an extensive clientèle, and he was considered one of the most noted lawyers of the Montreal bar. He is a fluent and graceful speaker; he is also distinguished for his practical mind, sound judgment, and impressive, though cautious, disposition. He married, on the 3rd October, 1867, Marie Rosalie, daughter of the late Hon. M. Laframboise, founder of Le National, who afterwards was appointed one of the judges of the Superior Court for the province of Quebec, and Rosalie Dessaulles, a niece of the late Hon. Louis Joseph Papineau. Mrs. Loranger died in 1883, leaving seven children, three sons and four daughters.