Matheson, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur James, fifth son of the late Col. the Hon. Roderick Matheson, Senator, was born at Perth, Ontario, and educated at Upper Canada College, and Trinity College, Toronto. He was called to the Bar of Ontario in February, 1870. In March, 1866, he was gazetted lieutenant of the Perth Infantry company, with which he served in the provisional battalion at Brockville and Prescott on the St. Lawrence frontier during the first Fenian raid. In November, 1866, on the formation of the 42nd battalion, he was gazetted captain. Having resigned his commission while studying his profession in Toronto, he was afterwards re-appointed captain, and in 1885, major, and on 18th June, 1886, lieut.-col. of the 42nd battalion V. M. The services of the battalion were volunteered for the North-West during the rebellion but were not required. Lieut.-Col. Matheson was, for a number of years, a member of the town council, and for two years, 1883 and 1884, mayor of Perth. In politics he is a Conservative.
Angus, Richard Bladworth, Montreal, Director of the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, is a Scotchman by birth, having been born at Bathgate, in the neighbourhood of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, on the 28th day of May, 1830. He is one of four brothers, all remarkable for the early developed brilliancy of their talents. Mr. Angus received his scholastic education in the academy at Bathgate, and at an early age left Scotland and went to England, where, in a bank in Manchester, he received his business training. Bound to push his fortune, he came to Canada in 1857, and found a situation in the Bank of Montreal. In the first series of this work in connection with the life of the late Mr. C. F. Smithers, a brief concise sketch is given of the early history of banking in Canada, with especial reference to the great Bank of Montreal, of which that regretted financier had for several years the direction. It was with the progress of the same important institution that the subject of this memoir was destined to be identified during some of the most active years of his busy life, like not a few of the Scotchmen who have made their mark on this side of the Atlantic, Mr. Angus had his business training in one of the great commercial centres of England. The qualities which were ultimately to win him the confidence of his colleagues in some of the grandest enterprises of the time were soon recognized in the young Manchester clerk, and he rapidly mounted the ladder of promotion. In three years he had risen to the post of accountant, and in 1861 was sent to Chicago to assume charge of the branch office in that city. After some years residence in Chicago, he was entrusted with a still larger responsibility, being appointed to the associate management of the New York agency; a year later we find him once more in Montreal, as manager of the local business, and having discharged the critical business of that position for five years, he succeeded Mr. King, in 1869, as general manager. His tenure of that high position was marked by tact, foresight, and the fullest appreciation of opportunities for extending the influence of the institution. In 1876 he resigned, in order to accept the vice-presidency of the St. Paul’s, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway, a step which in due time was to have important results. It will be remembered that, as in the east, the entrance of the Maritime provinces into the Canadian Confederation necessitated the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. So in the extreme west, the admission of British Columbia was effected solely on the condition that communication should be established between the Pacific region and the rest of the Dominion. It was one of the grandest enterprises that had ever been conceived in an age fertile in great undertakings. In 1871 the survey was begun, but the scheme was to undergo many modifications before the actual initiation of the work of construction. It was finally deemed most advisable on various grounds that the responsibility should be assumed, not by the Government, but by a private company. At last a syndicate was formed, with Mr. (now Sir) George Stephen as its leading spirit. Mr. Angus was one of the original body, and has remained in connection with the incorporate company ever since as one of its directors. He shares, therefore, in the glory, as he has shared in the responsibilities and risks, of a public work, which has revolutionised the relations of the distant parts of the British empire, and enhanced a hundredfold the prospects of Canada as to immigration, industry and commerce. Not, indeed, till the present generation has passed away will the world sufficiently appreciate the services of the men by whom the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, an all-through route from ocean to ocean on British territory and a band of union between the metropolis and the farthest east, without which Imperial unity would be little more than a name. Mr. Angus is regarded as a shrewd business man, and very strict in his dealings. He is, however, none the less popular, as he has many amiable qualities, being a typical instance of that dual nature which is not uncommon, especially among Scotchmen, combining rigid adherence to the letter of a bargain, and close calculation of expenditure in business matters, with open-handed generosity in social intercourse. He is a member of the St. Andrew’s Society, and holds the position of vice-president. He is also a member of St. Paul’s lodge of Free Masons.
Jones, Robert Vonclure, A.M., Ph.D., Professor of Classics, Acadia College, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, was born on June 25, 1835, at Pownal, lot 49, Prince Edward Island. His father was William Jones, who was born in London, Great Britain, and emigrated with his parents to Prince Edward Island about the beginning of the present century. His mother was Mary Gay, who came with her parents from the state of Maine, United States, and settled in Prince Edward Island, about 1802. After leaving the common schools, Mr. Jones pursued a course of study in the Central Academy, Charlottetown, P.E.I. This school has since received the more ambitious title of Prince of Wales College. It was then, as now, a place of thorough drill, and in it faithful pupils could lay the foundation of a broad and sound scholarship. He went, at the beginning of 1855, to Horton Collegiate Academy to continue his studies; and was matriculated into Acadia College, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, in 1856. He graduated in 1860, and was a member of the class that included the names of Professors Hartt and Wells, and Drs. Rand and Alward. He continued his studies at Oxford University, England, after his appointment to Acadia College; and was for four years second master of Horton Collegiate Academy. He was appointed to the chair of classics in Acadia College in 1865, and this position he still holds. For some years he was one of the classical examiners to the University of Halifax. Mr. Jones has travelled quite extensively in England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Italy, and in some of the New England States. In religion he is a Baptist, and at the Baptist convention, held in the Baptist church, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, August 20th, 1887, he was unanimously elected president. He was married on June 8, 1865, to Emma R. Pineo, daughter of John O. Pineo, a well-known resident of Wolfville, Kings county.
Macdonald, Hon. Andrew Archibald, Lieutenant-Governor of Prince Edward Island, Charlottetown, was born at Three Rivers, in that province, on the 14th February, 1829. He is the eldest son of Hugh Macdonald, and Catherine Macdonald, his wife, and grandson of Andrew Macdonald, who purchased an estate of ten thousand acres in Prince Edward Island, in the early part of the century, and with his family and some fifty of his countrymen, whom he brought with him to settle on the property, emigrated from Inverness-shire, Scotland, to Prince Edward Island where his kinsman, Macdonald of Glenaladale and other relations had already taken up their abode. Shortly after his arrival in the province he likewise purchased the beautiful island of Panmure, seven hundred acres in extent, at the entrance of Cardigan bay. There he erected a dwelling-house and store and took up his residence. He set apart a suitable piece of land for a church, which was soon built with the assistance of a few settlers of the same faith, and there all would assemble on the Sundays for united prayer, or to join in offering the holy sacrifice of the mass at such rare intervals as a priest visited the district. The interior of the island was then covered with the primeval forest, unbroken by roads. The first settlers located along the borders of the seashore or by the river margin. The water was the great highway at all seasons. Snowshoes were as indispensable in winter as canoes were in summer, for the snowfall was much greater then than in later years, since the forest has been cleared. The firm of Andrew Macdonald & Sons at once established an extensive business in exporting the pine timber of the province to Great Britain, and importing such goods as the settlers required. They also extended a branch of the house to Miramichi, in New Brunswick. They experienced all the usual difficulties of early settlers in a new country, but we will only note a few somewhat different from the ordinary kind. In 1807, while the first ship they had chartered was loading, a sloop of war arrived from Halifax, and pressed the crew for the King’s service. No seamen could be had to replace them, and the ship and cargo were detained for a long time. Other ship-owners, fearing the same fate, would not accept colonial charters, and provincial trade was at a standstill, but Mr. Macdonald represented the matter so well to the government that the practice was soon discontinued, and business went on. At another time, as the old man and one of his younger sons were taking passage home to Britain, in the autumn, by a timber-laden ship, she was captured by an American privateer, and taken as a prize to Philadelphia, where he and his son were confined in jail for some months as prisoners. As they were unable to communicate with their friends and were without funds, they suffered great hardship, and endured such privation that the old gentleman’s health gave way, he was then allowed a limited liberty on parole. In the following spring he managed to acquaint his friends with his situation, and the attention of the Provincial government being called to the case, they obtained his liberation and he returned home. In 1817 the house at Panmure with every thing it contained, including valuable family papers, was destroyed by fire, the inmates barely escaping with their lives; but undaunted still, he imported brick and material from Britain and erected the first brick dwelling-house and stables ever seen in that part of the province. His original purchase of township lands had proved a very unfortunate one, as it involved him in a Chancery suit, which continued up to the time of his death, in 1833. His son, Hugh, succeeded to the property, and continued the suit for almost another generation, with the usual result in the Chancery suits of that period, the litigants were ruined and the whole estate swallowed up in costs. Hugh Macdonald, of Panmure, was one of the first Roman Catholics appointed to any office of importance after the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act. He was high sheriff of the province in 1834. A commissioner of the Small Debt Court and justice of the peace for Kings county; represented Georgetown for some time in the House of Assembly; held the imperial appointment of Controller of Customs and Navigation Laws, and was Collector of Customs at Three Rivers, P.E.I., from 1832 until his death, in 1857. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Andrew Archibald Macdonald, the subject of our sketch, who was educated at the public schools of the county and by private tutors. He first entered as a clerk in a general store, opened at Georgetown, P.E.I., by a relative, in 1844, and soon became a partner in the business. On the death of the senior member of the firm in 1851, he purchased the estate, continued the business, embarked largely in the fisheries, and took his two brothers into partnership. The firm became large buyers and exporters of the products of the province, and engaged extensively in shipbuilding. In 1871 he removed with his family to Charlottetown, and shortly afterwards disposed of his interest in the business to his partners. He had been Consular agent for the United States of America at Georgetown for twenty-five years, before his removal to the capital. He had entered political life at an early age, and was returned to the House of Assembly in 1854, as one of the representatives for Georgetown. At the next general election, although he polled a majority of the votes, he was unseated on a change of parties by scrutiny in the house in 1859. When the Legislative Council first became elective in 1863, he was elected thereto by the second district of Kings county, and again returned by the same constituency in 1868. Whilst, a member of the opposition, the government appointed him one of the delegates to confer with those from the governments of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick at the Charlottetown conference of first September, 1864, on the expediency of the union of the three provinces, when the deputation from Canada was received and the subject of a general confederation of the British American provinces informally discussed. He was also in the same year a member of the delegation to Quebec, which arranged the first terms of Confederation for the Dominion. On submitting these to his Island constituents at public meetings they were not approved, and he did not afterwards advocate this measure, until terms more favorable to the province and acceptable to the people had been obtained, when they received his strenuous support both on the platform and in the legislature. He was first called to the Executive Council in Mr. Coles’ administration, formed 14th March, 1867, and continued in that of Mr. Hensley, and also of Mr. Haythorne, until the defeat of the party in September, 1870. They were succeeded by Mr. Pope’s government, of which he became a member, and was leader in the upper house until the defeat of the party and their resignation on the 22nd April, 1872. They were recalled to power within the year, and he continued a member of the government from that time until the better terms of Confederation were secured and the measure finally accomplished, when he resigned his seat and accepted the position of provincial postmaster general, 1st July, 1873. After Confederation this office was merged in that of postmaster at Charlottetown, although still directing the Provincial mail service, in which many improvements were effected and the efficiency of the service greatly increased. In 1881 he was also appointed post-office inspector for the colony, and held these offices until his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor, on 1st August, 1884. He was a delegate to the International Convention held at Portland, U.S., in 1868, and has been a governor of the Prince of Wales College, a trustee for the Provincial Hospital for the Insane, a member of the Board of Education, a member of the Board of Works, and a member of the City School Board. In 1875 he was appointed by the government, arbitrator to settle difference between them and the contractors who built the Prince Edward Island Railway. He was also public trustee under the Land Purchase Act of 1875, and when the value had been awarded to the proprietors by the Court of Commissioners, but they had refused to divest themselves of their titles, he executed conveyances of upwards of four hundred thousand acres of their property to the government as provided in the Land Purchase Act. While in the legislature he assisted in passing many of the most important acts on the provincial statute book, and was one of the earliest advocates of the construction of the Prince Edward Island Railway as a provincial work, although it involved an expenditure of three millions of dollars, by a province whose ordinary revenue was then only three hundred thousand dollars, and whose population was but one hundred thousand, but it was successfully accomplished, and the cost borne by the province now enjoying its benefits. Lieut.-Governor Macdonald has for many years taken an active part in the promotion of temperance; is a member of the Dominion Temperance Alliance, and no wines or spirituous liquors are used or offered at government house. Mr. Macdonald, like his forefathers from time immemorial, professes the Roman Catholic faith. He is a member of the St. Vincent de Paul Society for the relief of the poor, and has been chief of the Prince Edward Island Caledonian Club for several years past. He is also president of the Arbor Society. He married, in 1863, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Owen, formerly postmaster-general, with issue four sons, the eldest, Æneas Adolphe, is his private secretary and a law student in the office of Peters & Peters; the second son, Percy, has gone into a mercantile establishment to learn the business, and the two younger sons are still at college.
Smart, William Lynn, Barrister, Hamilton, Ontario, was born at St. Albans, Middlesex, England, on 16th September, 1824. He is the eldest son of the late John Newton Smart, of Trewhitt House, Rothbury, Northumberland, who married, in 1823, Mary Ann, co-heiress of the Rev. Thomas Gregory, vicar of Henlow, Bedfordshire, England. He succeeded his father to the Trewhitt and Netherton properties, in 1875. Mr. Smart graduated at King’s College, London. He left college in 1842, and was articled to Smart & Buller, attorneys-at-law and solicitors in Chancery, and was admitted as attorney in 1847, and was then taken in as a partner of the firm of Smart, Buller & Smart. He remained in this firm until 1853, when he came, to Canada on a visit to the late Colonel Light, of Woodstock. He subsequently accepted the appointment of secretary of the Woodstock and Lake Erie Railway Company. This company afterwards amalgamated with the Amherstburg and St. Thomas Railway Company, under the name Canada Southern Railroad. Mr. Smart remained as its secretary until the year 1862. Having been admitted as an attorney-at-law by the Law Society of Upper Canada, in 1864 he left the Canada Southern and entered into partnership with Hector Cameron, Q.C., the new firm taking the name of Cameron & Smart. During the time of the partnership, 1866, he was called to the bar of Upper Canada. In 1868 the partnership was dissolved, and he commenced business in Toronto on his own account. In 1873, he removed to Hamilton, where he received the appointment of deputy judge, under the late Judge Logie and also the late Judge Ambrose. The duties of this office he discharged with ability and care, giving much satisfaction, an address having been presented to him, signed by the bar of Wentworth county, until the appointment of the present Judge Sinclair. In 1876 he retired from his judicial position, and began business again as barrister, opening an office in the Court House, Hamilton. Judge Smart has devoted himself more or less to civic politics, and was during 1870 and 1871 a councillor for Yorkville, now part of Toronto. He belongs to the order of Freemasons, and has held the office of secretary of the Ionic lodge, No. 25, Toronto. He is likewise a member of the Orange order. He is an Episcopalian; and in politics a Liberal-Conservative. He was a candidate for South Oxford in 1882, but did not succeed. He married, in 1863, Catherine McGill Crooks, daughter of the late John Crooks, of Niagara. By this lady, who died in 1871, he has three children. He is a man of broad views, and though not a prohibitionist, is a sturdy advocate of temperance.