Armstrong, Rev. W. D., M.A., Ph. D., Pastor of St. Paul’s (Presbyterian) Church, Ottawa, Ontario, was born at Cavan, Durham county, Ontario, on the 28th of July, 1845, and is the son of John D. Armstrong, yeoman, of that place. After a preliminary education in the schools of his native place, he entered Upper Canada College, and soon attained to a front place in his classes. At the close of his term he carried off the Governor-General’s prize, and the classical, the mathematical, and modern language prizes. He then entered the Toronto University, and graduated from that institution in 1870, the silver medallist in metaphysics and ethics, and prizeman in Hebrew, Chaldee and Syriac. During his course in the university he also obtained a number of scholarships and prizes in various departments. After leaving Toronto University he took a course in theology in Knox (Presbyterian) College, Toronto, where he likewise distinguished himself. On the 14th of May, 1874, he was ordained pastor of his present charge, and has continued ever since (with one short break, when he was sent to Great Britain in 1883 for a few months, in the interest of the French Canadian missions), as the faithful exponent of Christ’s message of love to the world, greatly appreciated and esteemed by his congregation. In 1886, the Boston University conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Rev. Dr. Armstrong has a strong liking for literature, and amidst his various arduous parish cares and duties, has found time to contribute a good many articles to the newspaper press, and publish several sermons. On the 29th of September, 1886, he married Jean W., daughter of Henry J. Johnston, of Montreal, a very accomplished lady, and one who has proved a true helper to him as minister of a large congregation.
Guthrie, Donald, Q.C., M.P.P. for South Wellington, Guelph, Ontario, was born on the 8th May, 1840, in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father was Hugh Guthrie, and his mother, Catharine Macgregor, sister of Patrick Macgregor, M.A., barrister-at-law, Toronto, a distinguished Gaelic and general scholar. Mr. Guthrie received his early education in his native city, and, when about fourteen years of age, he left his fatherland. He reached Toronto in August, 1854. Here he entered the office of the Hon. Oliver Mowat, as a junior clerk; and afterwards became managing clerk for John Helliwell, barrister. In 1859 he left Toronto and settled in Guelph as managing clerk for Fergusson & Kingsmill, barristers. The Hon. Fergusson-Blair, one of the partners of the firm, having retired in December, 1863, Mr. Guthrie was admitted into partnership, and the name of the firm was changed to Kingsmill and Guthrie. Under this style the business was carried on until Mr. Kingsmill was appointed judge of the County Court of Bruce, in January, 1867, when Mr. Guthrie became head of the firm, and has continued such ever since, the firm now being known as Guthrie and Watt. Mr. Guthrie was admitted an attorney in 1863; barrister in 1866, passing his examinations with distinction; and, in March, 1876, was created a Queen’s counsel by the Lieut.-Governor of Ontario, and by the Governor-General of Canada, October, 1885. In December, 1882, he was elected a bencher of the Law Society, and was re-elected for five years in April, 1886. Since 1863 he has been solicitor for the county of Wellington, and also for the same period he has been solicitor for the city of Guelph, and acts in this capacity for several other municipalities, banks, etc. He has been president of the Guelph Gas Company since its incorporation in 1870; is a director of the Guelph Junction Railway Company, and of the Wellington Hotel Company. He occupied the position of treasurer of the St. Andrew’s Society of Guelph, from 1862 to 1869, and in 1870 was chosen its president. Mr. Guthrie was elected a member of the House of Commons in 1876, as representative for South Wellington, and served until the general election in 1878, when he presented himself for re-election, and was returned by 303 majority. He continued in the House of Commons until the general election of 1882, when he voluntarily retired from active political life, with the view of devoting his whole attention for some years to his professional duties. However, in 1886, he once more sought parliamentary honours, and the sturdy Liberals of South Wellington sent him to the Ontario legislature as their representative on the 28th of December in the same year, by the handsome majority of 671. Mr. Guthrie was selected in February, 1877, to move the reply to the speech from the throne in the House of Commons; and on the 2nd March, 1887, he moved the reply to the Lieut.-Governor’s address in the Ontario legislature. While in the House of Commons—1876-78—Mr. Guthrie was a supporter of Mr. Mackenzie’s government, and was an active member of the special committee appointed to inquire into the affairs of the Northern Railway Company. This committee sat for several weeks, took an immense mass of evidence, and made an exhaustive report, which enabled the government to secure from the railway company a large sum in place of moneys improperly expended in elections, etc. Mr. Guthrie was also an active member of the Committee of Privileges and Elections at the time when it investigated the charges against Mr. Speaker Anglin, and other members, for alleged breaches of the Independence of Parliament Act. After the defeat of Mr. Mackenzie’s government in 1878, Mr. Guthrie, with his political friends, went into opposition. He actively opposed the new government on the tariff, the Letellier matter, the Canadian Pacific Railway contract, the disallowance of the Streams Bill, the Gerrymander Act, etc. Mr. Guthrie is a member of the Presbyterian church. On the 17th of December, 1863, he was married in Montreal to Eliza Margaret MacVicar, youngest daughter of John MacVicar, formerly of Dunglass, Argyleshire, Scotland, and latterly of Chatham, Ontario. Mrs. Guthrie is a sister of the Rev. D. H. MacVicar, D.D., LL.D., principal of the Presbyterian College, Montreal, and of the Rev. Dr. Malcolm MacVicar, professor of theology in the Toronto Baptist College (McMaster Hall), Toronto.
Hinson, Rev. Walter, Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Moncton, New Brunswick, was born at Chesham, England, on the 14th of May, 1858, and came to Canada in 1879. His father, Thomas Hinson, and mother, Mary Benwell, are both alive, and are residing in Hertfordshire, Eng.; he has a brother and sister in London. Rev. Mr. Hinson was educated at Hulme Cliff College in Derbyshire, and Harley House, East London, England. He studied for the ministry, and was ordained in 1880. He is a member of the Eastern New Brunswick Baptist Association, and the church of which he is pastor is one of the most important centres of religious activity in the district. It has a membership of between six and seven hundred, and over four hundred scholars in its Sunday-school. For general benevolence and Christian aggressiveness its record is good. Rev. Mr. Hinson has always been a total abstainer, and from early youth connected with temperance societies. He is at present a member of the Moncton Division, Sons of Temperance, and is considered one of the most aggressive of the temperance army in New Brunswick. Mr. Hinson was brought up among the Baptists, and very naturally feels greatly at home in, and is one of the leading lights of, the denomination. In the pulpit he possesses a peculiar power, his manner and matter being forcible and original, and we have no doubt there is a great future of usefulness before this young and rising divine. He was married in July, 1886, to Jennie A. Austin, of Herts, England.
Allison, Charles F.—The late Charles F. Allison, of Sackville, New Brunswick, who was born on the 25th of January, 1795, and died the 20th of November, 1858, at the age of sixty-three years, was the second son of James Allison, whose father, Joseph Allison, of Newton Limavady, county of Londonderry, Ireland, emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1769, and settled at Horton, Kings county, where he continued to reside until his death in 1794. James Allison married and settled at Cornwallis, where he lived and died at the ripe age of ninety years. Here Charles F. was born, and received his education at the Grammar school, and in 1812 moved to Parrsboro’, where he found employment as a clerk in the establishment of James Ratchford until 1817, when he went to Sackville, New Brunswick, and entered into partnership with the late Hon. William Crane, in a general mercantile business, and in this he continued until 1840. On the 4th of January, 1839, Mr. Allison addressed a letter to the chairman of the New Brunswick district of Wesleyan ministers, in which he proposed “to purchase an eligible site and erect suitable buildings in Sackville, in the county of Westmoreland, for the establishment of a school, in which not only the elementary, but the higher branches of education may be taught, and to be altogether under the management and control of the British conference in connection with the Wesleyan missionaries in these provinces;” and he proposed to give £100 ($400) per annum for ten years towards the support of the school. This generous offer having been accepted, he made arrangements to proceed with the erection of a suitable edifice for the academy—the corner-stone of which was laid on the 9th of July, 1840, and from that time to the close of his life in 1858, he devoted a large share of his time and business talent to watching over and promoting the financial interests of the educational enterprise which, under his fostering care, developed wonderfully. In addition to the $20,000 which he had given to establish the older branch of the institution, he gave $4,000 to aid in the erection of the ladies’ branch, which was opened in 1854; and in his will he left $2,000 for the academies, and $1,000 for the college whenever it should be organized. So that of the moderate fortune which he had accumulated before retiring from mercantile life in 1840, at least $30,000 were employed in founding and establishing the educational institutions which bear his name, and which stand as the enduring monument of the far-seeing wisdom and liberality of this unselfish Christian patriot. Mr. Allison was married to Milcah, daughter of John and Anne Trueman, on June 23rd, 1840. Mrs. Allison survived him, but died on the 14th of June, 1884. Mary, their only child, was born 1st Sept., 1847, and died 1st Jan., 1871. At the date of Mr. Allison’s demise, The Borderer, a local weekly paper, thus kindly alluded to him:
“Our sheet this week appears in mourning, because we are called to record the death of one whose removal is indeed a public loss, and one, too, of no ordinary magnitude. Almost every individual in our community feels the death of Charles F. Allison as a public bereavement. But far beyond the circle of personal acquaintanceship, everywhere throughout the lower British American colonies, Mr. Allison’s name has been known and his influence felt, as the most munificent public benefactor who has yet arisen in these provinces, to bless his country and benefit the world. Mr. Allison was a native of Cornwallis, Nova Scotia, but came to this place when a young man, and here carried on, in connection with his partner, the late Hon. Wm. Crane, an extensive business until 1840. In all his business transactions he was remarkable for diligence, promptitude, punctuality, and rigid honesty. He did not make haste to be rich by embarking in any rash speculation, being, doubtlessly, more inclined to the safe than to the rapid mode of acquiring wealth. He was, however, quite successful, so that when he was led, many years since, to the more earnest consideration of the fundamental doctrine of the Christian system of practical ethics, ‘Ye are not your own, but bought with a price,’ etc., he found himself in possession of a considerable amount of property, of which he evidently, thenceforward to the end of his life, considered himself but the steward; and as such he was eminently wise and faithful, so that, we doubt not, he has been greeted by his Divine Master with the commendation, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’ A large portion of the last eighteen or twenty years of his life was most unostentatiously employed in various works altogether unselfish. The noble educational institutions which he founded, and which he has so largely helped to build up to their present state of pre-eminent usefulness, have occupied a great deal of his time and attention, for he not only cheerfully paid six thousand pounds and upwards to ensure their establishment, but without fee or reward discharged the onerous duty of treasurer, and watched and labored with parental kindness, solicitude and devotion, to promote their prosperity. These, we believe, will long stand, monuments of the wisdom as well as of the benevolence of the Christian patriot and philanthropist. We have not room to enlarge upon the modesty, gentleness, affability, and other traits of character which so endeared him to all who had the privilege of his personal acquaintance. Nor yet can we speak of the many ways in which his quiet influence will be so much missed in our neighborhood. ‘He rests from his labors, and his works do follow him.’”
In The Provincial Wesleyan, of the same week, published at Halifax, Nova Scotia, a similar notice of Mr. Allison’s death appeared, in which the writer said:
“He was a benefactor to his race, a blessing to his country, an ornament to the age in which he lived. He lived not for himself, but for his generation and for generations yet unborn. Fortune, this world’s wealth, he sought and won; but lavished it not on personal pleasures or selfish aggrandizement. His time and his means were freely given to the noble cause of securing to the youth of these provinces a sound, liberal, and religious education. His humility equalled his munificence. He thirsted not for fame. But he has left a monument for himself more noble than sculptured stone in the institutions he has reared, and with which his worthy name must be forever associated.”