Montgomery, Donald, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Chief Superintendent of Education for Prince Edward Island, was born at Valleyfield, 3rd May, 1848. His parents came to the island from Scotland in 1840. Mr. Montgomery received his education at Prince of Wales College in Charlottetown, the foremost seat of learning in Prince Edward Island, and at McGill University, Montreal. He progressed rapidly in his chosen profession of teacher, and in 1874 was appointed principal of the Provincial Normal School. This position he held for three years. The progress of education in the island has been very gradual. At the original distribution of the land in 1767, thirty acres were reserved in each township for a schoolmaster, and there the matter rested until 1821, when a national school was opened at the capital. Later on a board of education was appointed for the island and other schools were opened. In 1836 a central academy was established in Charlottetown. In 1837, John McNeil was appointed the first superintendent of schools. At this time the total population of the island was about thirty-five thousand, and there were only fifty-one schools, with a total attendance of 1,533. Means were scanty and the schoolmaster was literally “abroad” most of his time, removing from house to house, as he got his board among the different families of his district. In 1842, there were 121 schools and 4356 pupils. In 1852, a free school act was passed by the Legislature. In 1853, the office of general superintendent for the island, abolished in 1848 (a county superintendent for each county being substituted), was re-established. In 1855, a bill was passed establishing a Normal School, which was opened in 1856. The question as to whether the Bible should be read in the Central Academy and the Normal School was earnestly debated by the people and brought to the notice of the Legislature in 1858. The House decided against the use of the Bible in the schools. In 1861, however, was passed an act admitting the Bible into the schools. The Prince of Wales College was established in the same year. Many of the best men in the island have received their earlier education at this institution, which, however, they frequently supplement by a course at other seats of learning in the Dominion, the United States and Great Britain. In 1878, Mr. Montgomery embarked in politics, and on the 20th September in that year was elected to a seat in the local legislature for his native district of Belfast. This was a bye-election caused by the resignation of William Welsh. At the general election, Mr. Montgomery again offered, and was re-elected in April, 1879. He was a moderate Conservative. He resigned his seat in the House in the summer of that year, and on the 26th September, 1879, was appointed to the position of chief superintendent of education. This position he has continued to hold up to the present time. He is connected with the Presbyterian denomination. He married, on 10th August, 1887, Mary Isabella, daughter of William McPhail, of Orwell. His residence is situated on Prince street, in Charlottetown. A man in the very prime of life and usefulness, Mr. Montgomery occupies a position of the highest importance.
Rivard, Antoine Majorique, M.D., Sheriff for the district of Joliette, was born on the 24th September, 1838, at St. Leon, district of Three Rivers, province of Quebec. He is descended from a family that came from France, and settled at Batiscan, province of Quebec, in 1660. His father was Pierre Celestine Rivard, merchant at St. Leon, and his mother Marie Angèle Caron. He was educated at the Lanigan Academy, Three Rivers, and Nicolet College. He was admitted as a physician and surgeon on October 8th, 1861, and practised at St. Leon until 1865, when he removed to Joliette, where he has since resided. He has been councillor and mayor of the town of Joliette, vice-president of the Agricultural Society, county of Joliette, president of School Commissions, director of La Compagnie Manufacturier de Tabac Canadien de Joliette, secretary of the Medico-Surgical Association of the district of Joliette, and surgeon of the 83rd battalion since 1874. He was a governor of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the province of Quebec from 1877 to 1880, collector of inland revenue from 1880 to 1882, and was made sheriff on the 24th February, 1885. Dr. Rivard was married on the 16th February, 1863, to Marie Corine Asilda Lemaitre Angé, of Rivière du Loup, en haut, and has always been a strict adherent of the Roman Catholic faith. He is an ornament to the profession which he has made the study of his life, and his talents are only second to his indomitable energy and perseverance.
Cartier, Sir George Etienne. This illustrious statesman was born in the village of St. Antoine, in the county of Verchères, on the 6th of September, 1814. It was claimed for him that he was descended from one of the nephews of Jacques Cartier, the adventurous Breton navigator, who showed to France the ocean pathways to a western empire. But George Etienne stood in no need of the dim and flickering lustre reflected from remote family achievement. He made for himself, in the history of his country, a name and a fame which, by right of native ability and resolute and fortunate effort, are permanently his own. His immediate ancestors were of the better class of French Canadians. His grandfather, a successful merchant, was one of the first members chosen for the county of Verchères, when the Constitutional Act of 1791 gave to Lower Canada the right to representative institutions. In Lower Canada, in the early days of George Etienne Cartier, two avocations possessed, and still possess, a strong attraction for the more gifted amongst the younger population. These avocations were the church and the bar. Cartier chose the latter. To qualify himself for his intended profession, he pursued, for eight years, a course of study at the college of St. Sulpice, in the city of Montreal. There is no tradition to show that he was a brilliant student. In this respect he adds another to the number of eminent men who reserved, not for the ideal world of the school-room, but for the actual world of after life, powers and faculties previously unsuspected, because undisplayed. After leaving college he entered upon the study of the law, and in 1835 he began practice in the city of Montreal. The legal profession, crowded at that period, overcrowded at the present time, still affords, to use the simile of Daniel Webster, “room in the upper story.” To that place of vantage Cartier made his way. The explanation of his success is not far to seek. He possessed at that time, and until the end of his life, an industry that never knew cessation, an energy that never faltered, and an ever-present consciousness of his own ability. But, for young Cartier, another pursuit besides law presented imperative claims to attention. This was politics. To him, and to the majority of his countrymen, they seemed to mean political existence, and the preservation of their language and institutions. Cartier had scarcely begun the practice of his profession when he was drawn into the vortex. Louis Joseph Papineau, speaker of the Legislative Assembly since the year 1817, had been flaming, like a portentous meteor, in the troubled sky of Canadian politics. Under his influence, Cartier, like the overwhelming majority of French Canadians, fell. It was no wonder. Papineau was an impetuous leader; he had a popular cause; he appeared to be fighting an unequal battle. To narrate in detail the causes which created a leader out of Papineau, and which attracted to his banner all the more enthusiastic among the French Canadians, would be to fill volumes: to write a history of a country, and not the brief biography of a man. But a few words may serve to convey a faint idea of the political condition of Lower Canada, at the time when Cartier ventured into the perilous pathways of the provincial politics of that epoch. From the conquest of Canada, in 1760, to 1791 (the year of the passing of the Constitutional Act), Canada was a portion of the British empire, but was an alien in respect to British institutions. This Act divided what was known as the Province of Quebec into two new provinces—Upper and Lower Canada. A legislature was, by the Act, established in each province. It consisted of a House of Assembly and a Legislative Council. The people elected the Assembly; the Crown nominated the Council. Herein lay the monstrous defect of the Constitutional Act; the poisonous leaven that corrupted the body politic in Upper and Lower Canada; the pestilent germ that developed into outrageous misgovernment, jeopardy of British connection, and ultimate rebellion. The Upper House, nominated by the Crown, was not only irresponsible to the people, but set their wishes at absolute defiance. The popular Assembly might pass necessary measures; the Council expunged the provisions that made them useful, or trampled them under foot. The oligarchy, which was continually in a minority in the Assembly, but always in a majority in the Council, lorded it over Lower Canada in contemptuous indifference to the wishes of the French Canadian majority.[[4]] The Governor, who was commissioned to represent the King, was the mere puppet of the oligarchy. While they flattered him they ruled him, and cajoled while they enslaved. Thus, for long and weary years, was enacted the wretched drama of despotism under a constitutional mask. There seemed no sign of relief. The governors and the oligarchy, by their machinations, had gained the ear of the imperial authorities, and tricked them into the belief that to rule in contempt of British institutions was the only means of perpetuating British rule in Upper and Lower Canada. With the intention to act justly, the British government, above all others, seemed, at this period, to be beyond the reach of the warnings of experience; seemed doomed never to know the truths as to the dismal history of colonial misgovernment. The loss of the thirteen colonies had been a lesson taught in vain. Not until the Earl of Durham, in a state paper which eclipses, for ability, conscientiousness, vast industry, and fearless truthfulness, any other of the kind in the diplomatic literature of the British American colonies—not until he laid bare the ulcers and festering wounds on the Canadian body politic, did the imperial authorities learn the truth, and set themselves to prepare a remedy. In the year 1837 the patience and prudence of the French Canadian leaders gave way. The pleading for reform had been scouted as treason; now insurrection was about to take the place of argument. Among the deplorable elements engendered in the long struggle for a better state of things was that of race-hatred. For this dangerous passion, Papineau, often violent in language and unwise in denunciation, was more responsible than his opponents. To this passion, Cartier, even in his hot youth, would not surrender himself. But, when the movement which Papineau for nearly a quarter of a century had fostered, burst away from his control, and leapt from agitation into rebellion, George Etienne Cartier, throwing to the winds considerations of selfishness and prudence, boldly took his life in his hand, and appealed to the arbitrament of the sword. The autumn of 1837 was ominous of coming troubles. The government, even if no other source of information had been at their command, could not fail to perceive in the speeches of the more impetuous of the French Canadian leaders that an appeal to arms was in immediate contemplation. After waiting for a period which to their friends seemed perilously prolonged, the authorities determined at length to grapple with the incipient insurrection. On the 16th of November, 1837, warrants for high treason were issued against the Montreal agitators who were inciting the people to rebellion. Papineau was included in the number, but he had been warned in time. He placed the St. Lawrence between himself and arrest, and made good his way towards the Richelieu river. His arrival in that locality brought to a focus the latent elements of revolt. The disaffected peasantry of the surrounding districts trooped to their headquarters, a village named Debartzch, in the parish of St. Charles. But, in addition to the encampment at St. Charles, there was another and more memorable mustering-place of the “patriots.” This was at St. Denis, on the Chambly river. The leader of the patriots was Dr. Wolfred Nelson, a man whose energy, courage and principles won him the unshaken confidence of the peasantry. At St. Denis we find George Etienne Cartier. A British force under Colonel Gore, a Waterloo veteran, was sent against St. Denis. Accompanying the expedition was a deputy-sheriff armed with a warrant for the arrest of Dr. Wolfred Nelson on a charge of high treason. On the morning of the 23rd of November, 1837, the troops, after twelve hours’ march through the sloughs, mud, and pit-falls of a winter road in Lower Canada, approached the village of St. Denis. A contemporary account thus narrates the result of the attack on the position of the insurgents: —
The necessary orders were given for the troops to advance; an order which was promptly obeyed, notwithstanding the harassing and fatiguing march of the night. Towards the north-eastern entrance of the village of St. Denis there is a large stone house, of three or four stories, which was discovered to be full of armed men, who opened a sharp and galling fire upon the troops. The skirmishing party here consisted of the light company of the 32nd, under Captain Markham. Within a quarter of an hour after the firing commenced, Captain Markham was severely wounded in the leg; and, almost at the same moment, received two dangerous wounds in the neck, which brought him to the ground. In conveying him to the rear, he received another wound, a proof of the dexterity and precision of the fire kept up by the patriots. It was found by Colonel Gore that the infantry, deprived of the assistance of Colonel Wetherall’s force, was inadequate to cope with the terrible fire of the musketry that was kept up and directed against them from the stone house. The field-piece, accordingly, was brought to bear upon this fort of the insurgent army, and injured it considerably, sending many of the inmates to their final account. Notwithstanding, as the ammunition was nearly exhausted, it was deemed prudent to retire, in order to maintain the communication with Sorel, as many of the inhabitants were seen gathering from all directions to the scene of action. About half-past two in the afternoon, the order to fall back was given; and, with the loss of six men killed and ten wounded, a retreat was commenced. The roads were so bad it was impossible to get farther than three miles that night, and Colonel Gore was under the necessity of bivouacking till daylight of Friday morning (24th), when he again commenced his march upon Sorel, which he reached that afternoon.
On the 25th of November, 1837, Lieutenant-Colonel Wetherall and a British force drove the patriots from their position at St. Charles. A few days after this event Colonel Gore, with his command reinforced marched upon St. Denis. But the victory at St. Charles had caused defections in the ranks of Dr. Nelson. He did not wait a second attack, but abandoned his position, and sought to make his escape to the United States. Thus ended the operations on the Richelieu, and with them the rebellion south of the River St. Lawrence. George E. Cartier was with Dr. Nelson in the combat at St. Denis. In after life, a political opponent would sometimes taunt him with cowardice on that occasion. To such reproaches he never replied, and hence there were some persons who suspected that there might be truth in the accusation. But Cartier himself knew better, and could afford to be silent. Ten years or so after St. Denis his conduct was described by Dr. Nelson, who was qualified to speak on the subject. In La Minerve, of Montreal, under date of September 4th, 1848, Dr. Nelson’s “attestation,” dated Montreal, 21st August, 1848, was published in French. “Seeing,” says the Doctor, “that an appeal has been made to me to give my testimony concerning certain events at St. Denis, in 1837, I will do so in the interest of truth and justice. I owe this to my friends, and to the country in general.”
It is true that M. Henri Cartier[[5]] remarked that it would be well to retreat, seeing the destruction caused by the discharges of the enemy, the want of munitions, and the flight of a number of persons of consequence. I strongly opposed this retreat; but, notwithstanding that, Mr. Henri Cartier vigorously supported us during all the day. M. George Cartier never made allusion to the retreat, and he like his cousin, M. H. Cartier, valiantly and effectively contributed to the success of this struggle. And these gentlemen only left me when I was myself obliged to leave, nine days after this event, when the second expedition of troops moved against St. Denis; resistance then having become impossible, I sent M. George Cartier, towards two o’clock in the afternoon, for some stores to St. Antoine, and he promptly returned with succour, after about an hour’s absence. Mr. George Cartier did not wear a tuque bleu[[6]] on the day of the battle.
Wolfred Nelson.
Montreal, 21st August, 1848.