Is shouting with joy to behold her.
Here is good word-painting, and shows what heights our poet is capable of attaining. We would say, in conclusion, that we think Mr. McLachlan should be looked upon as a benefactor to his country, in that he has thrown a halo over the humblest home. Well would it be, for those who are seized with the “brick and mortar craze” of the present day, to pause and read “The Old Settler’s Address to his Old Log House,” before he lays the foundation stone of the new brick mansion that too often leads to ruin, and sometimes to disgrace.
O’Connor, Hon. John, Q.C., Puisne Judge of the Divisional Court of Queen’s Bench, who died at Cobourg, on the 3rd November, 1887, was of Irish descent. His parents, both of whom were named O’Connor, were representatives of two distinct branches of that family, and emigrated in 1823 from Kerry to Boston, Massachusetts, where deceased was born, in January, 1824. Four years later his parents removed to Canada, and settled in Essex county, Ontario, where he grew to manhood. When about nineteen years of age he sustained an accident which materially influenced his future career. While cutting timber on his father’s farm a heavy tree fell upon him, jambing one of his legs in the brushwood. Young O’Connor struggled hard to liberate the limb, but failed, and as night was fast approaching, and a biting frost prevailed, he feared he might be frozen to death. There was no hope of assistance. Under these desperate circumstances the young fellow took out his jackknife, cut off the limb, and crawled to his home over the snow, bleeding profusely. This disabled the future judge for manual labor, and from that date he devoted all his energies to study. Mr. O’Connor was called to the bar in 1854, settled down to practice in Windsor, and was successful, not only in gaining a profitable business, but in acquiring a good deal of local influence, political and otherwise. He was also a member of the Michigan bar. He filled the offices of reeve of Windsor, warden of Essex, and chairman of the Windsor School Board. In politics, he was a Conservative, and in religion a Roman Catholic. Mr. O’Connor represented Essex in the Canadian Assembly for a short period, and he was member of the same constituency in the House of Commons from 1867 to 1873, being one of Sir John Macdonald’s cabinet from 1872 till it resigned in 1873. Defeated in Essex in 1874, he was out of Parliament until 1878, when he was elected for Russell county, and again became a member of the Conservative government, holding the portfolios successively of president of the Council, postmaster-general, and secretary of state. From the cabinet he went to the bench, having been a judge of the Ontario Queen’s Bench since September, 1884.
Moffat, William, Treasurer of the county of Renfrew, Pembroke, Ontario, was born on the 29th November, 1825, in Haddingtonshire, Scotland. His father, Alexander Moffat, came to Pembroke in 1840, and laid out the village (now town) of Pembroke. He was its first postmaster, and subsequently became an extensive mill owner. In his day he was a leading Reformer, and was on one occasion nominated by his party to represent it in the Legislative Council, but declined the honor. Mr. Moffat’s mother was Margaret Dickson Purvis, who died in 1834. Mr. Moffat, the subject of our sketch, is the eldest son of this worthy couple, and received his education in Bytown, now Ottawa. He worked with his father in his mills in the section of country where the family had settled, and which was then an almost unbroken wilderness, until he was twenty-three years of age, when he began the lumber business, and carried this on until 1865; and from that year he conducted his father’s business, which consisted of flour and woollen mills, until his death, on the 7th of April, 1872, when he, with his brother Alexander, continued the business, to which they have added oatmeal and saw mills, until 1878. The mills were on the site on which his father first built in 1840. Mr. Moffat has in his day taken an active interest in municipal affairs. He was reeve of the township of Pembroke for the years 1871 to 1874; and during 1872 to 1876 he was warden of the county of Renfrew. In 1875 and ’76 he occupied the position of reeve of the village of Pembroke; and he was also the first mayor of the town of Pembroke, holding that office in 1877 and 1878. In January, 1885, he was appointed treasurer for the county of Renfrew, and this office he continues to fill to the satisfaction of his fellow citizens. He was the projector of the Kingston and Pembroke Railway, and was one of its first directors. He is a member of the Masonic order. In politics he is a Reformer, and twice carried the standard of his party through political contests—one for the Dominion parliament and one for the Ontario legislature—but unfortunately was unsuccessful on both occasions. In religion he is a member of the Presbyterian church. In 1849 he was married to Isabella Ambrose Kennedy, who came from Dumfriesshire, Scotland.
Ouimet, Hon. Aldric Joseph, Lieutenant-Colonel, LL.B., Q.C., Montreal, M.P. for Laval County, and Speaker of the House of Commons at Ottawa, was born at Ste. Rose, Laval county, on the 20th May, 1848. He belongs to one of the oldest families in the district of Montreal, they having settled there over a century ago. His father was Michel Ouimet, a justice of the peace, and his mother, Elizabeth St. Louis Filiatrault. Hon. Mr. Ouimet was educated at the Seminary of St. Therese de Blainville, and graduated a LL.B. at Victoria College, Cobourg, Ontario, in 1869. He studied law in the office of Edmund Barnard, in Montreal, and was called to the bar of Lower Canada in 1870, and since that period he has successfully practised his profession in Montreal, being the head of the law firm of Ouimet, Cornellier and Emard. On the 11th October, 1880, he was appointed a Queen’s counsel. In 1874, he was elected a member of the Board of Roman Catholic School Commissioners for Montreal, and has ever since taken a direct interest in educational matters. He is now a director of the Montreal City and District Savings Bank, and of the Credit Foncier Franco-Canadién; and president of the Laval Agricultural Society. A number of years ago he joined the volunteer movement, and was promoted to a captaincy in the Mount Royal Rifles. He is now lieutenant-colonel of the 65th battalion of rifles, and as such commanded his battalion throughout the North-West campaign in 1885. He did good service to his country in the Edmonton district, by pacifying the Indians, and persuading the Half-breeds to support the Dominion government. He is chairman of the council of the Dominion Rifle Association. He was first returned to the Dominion parliament in November, 1873, to his present seat, in place of the Hon. Joseph Hyacinthe Bellerose, who was called to the Senate in October of that year, and was re-elected by the same constituency by acclamation in 1874, 1878, and 1882. He was again elected at the general elections held in 1887. He was unanimously chosen speaker of the House of Commons on the 13th April, 1887, and now fills that high office with dignity and impartiality. Hon. Mr. Ouimet is a Liberal-Conservative in politics, and was returned as an independent supporter of Sir John A. Macdonald’s administration. He is a thorough Canadian, and has great faith in the future of Canada and of the Canadian nation. He supports a protective tariff, and any other well-devised scheme for the improvement of the country. In 1882 he voted for commercial independence. He seems to have at an early period of his life struck out for himself an independent career, and thus far he has succeeded. On the 30th July, 1874, he was married to Theresa, daughter of Alfred La Rocque, of Montreal, by Emelie Berthelot, and the fruit of the union has been four children.
Whelan, Hon. Edward, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.—The late Hon. Edward Whelan was born of humble parents, in the county of Mayo, Ireland, in the year 1824, and having received a fair common school education, when quite a boy he emigrated to Nova Scotia, and apprenticed himself to the Hon. Joseph Howe as a printer. At the age of nineteen he came to Prince Edward Island, and commenced writing for some of the public newspapers, and the brilliancy and force of his articles soon brought him into public notice, and shortly afterwards he assumed the editorship of a newspaper called The Palladium, in which the cause of the tenantry was ably espoused, and the foundation laid for a vigorous campaign, which resulted in the establishment of the present system of responsible government, and the abolition of the rental system, which was then as obnoxious to the people of Prince Edward Island as it is at present to the people of his native land. At the early age of twenty-one years, looking but a mere boy, he was elected to represent the second district of Kings county in the local legislature, and shortly afterwards having, in conjunction with the Hon. George Coles, succeeded in obtaining responsible government for the province, was chosen a member of the first government formed under the new constitution, and was co-leader with Mr. Coles for several years; when, finding that his position as a member of the Executive Council interfered with his freedom in discussing public questions, he retired from the council, retaining the office of Queen’s printer. His ready pen and eloquent tongue were ever ready to defend the causes he had espoused, and sometimes he would reply to the attacks of his opponents with such keen severity, that, feeling their inability to cope with him in a paper warfare, he was dragged into the courts on charges of defamation of character. And his eloquent and able defence before the court on one of those occasions won for him the admiration of the judges, lawyers, and all who heard him, convincing not only the court and jury, but all who heard or read his eloquent address to them, that he was no slanderer, but only an exponent of public wrongs. He continued to represent the second district of Kings county for over twenty years, during which time his popularity never abated. When the confederation of the British provinces was proposed, he warmly espoused the project, sincerely believing that its accomplishment would materially add to the prosperity and development of his adopted country; and although the party with whom he formerly worked were for the most part opposed to the scheme, and although he knew that the project was held in small favour by the great majority of his constituents, he nevertheless openly advocated what his honest convictions assured him was for their true welfare, although at the expense of his present popularity and interest. And now, after a lapse of over twenty years, the province almost unanimously acknowledges that he was not only honest and sincere in his criticisms, but right in his judgment, and a movement is on foot to erect a statue to his memory in the principal square in Charlottetown. He was one of the delegates to the Quebec convention for the confederation of the provinces, where he made many friends, and did credit to himself and the province he represented. The “Canadian Biographical Dictionary” of 1881 contains the following tribute to his worth:—“Amongst the most noted statesmen and orators in Prince Edward Island fifteen and thirty years ago was Edward Whelan. A self-taught man and sagacious politician, at the age of eighteen he came to the island, and shortly afterwards entered upon a brilliant career of journalism, having great power with the pen, and wielding it on the side of the people. In the local parliament, of which he was a member for a score of years, he was a great power, the premier part of the time, and one of the most courageous spokesmen of his party (the Liberal at all times). Few men in this province, living or dead, have done more service in getting important measures through parliament and extending civil liberty through the island. . . . Mr. Whelan was a Roman Catholic, and his death is reported to have been the triumph of faith.” The following is an extract from a speech by J. C. Underhay, M.P.P., at a meeting at Morell Bear in the fall of 1886, in advocacy of erecting a monument to his memory:—“No marble monument is needed to perpetuate the memory of Edward Whelan in this province. Our free schools, free lands, and self-government, with the well-tilled fields and comfortable homes, which all over the province have taken the place of the rude structures and neglected farms of the rent paying era, are all monuments to his memory more lasting than freestone or marble. But the people of Prince Edward Island need to erect a monument to his memory to tell to future generations that we, who were the immediate recipients of the benefits his patriotic heart, his gifted intellect, and his eloquent tongue secured for us, are not ungrateful for or forgetful of the great benefits he was so largely instrumental in securing for this province.” In 1851 Mr. Whelan married Mary Major, daughter of George Hughes, of the commissariat department at Halifax, by whom he had two daughters, who died some time previous to his own decease, which took place on the 10th of December, 1867. He had one son, a promising young man, who perished by the upsetting of a boat in Charlotte Harbor on the 1st of July, 1875, casting a deep gloom over the city, and so adding to the bereaved wife and mother’s already overflowing cup of affliction, that the chief justice was heard to say on the occasion that if ever there was a time when the miracle of raising the widow’s son could be fitly repeated it was then. His widow is still living, and, in consideration of the great public services rendered to the country by her husband, receives an annual grant from the legislature. Her whole existence seems to be wrapt up in the memory of her departed husband, and the one great desire of her life is to live to see a suitable monument erected to his memory.