Shaw, Lieutenant-Colonel James. The late Senator Shaw was born in New Ross, county Wexford, Ireland, in the year 1798, so famous in Irish history. He was descended from two ancient and honourable families, and took pride in tracing his lineage back many generations to persons of distinction, being Scotch on his father’s side, and on his mother’s he was of French extraction, her family, the d’Ouselys, being Huguenots, who fled to Ireland, the name being corrupted to Dowsley in the course of years. In the year 1820, after completing his education in Dublin, Mr. Shaw, in the twenty-second year of his age, came to Canada with letters of introduction to Lord Dalhousie, who attached him to his household, with an officer’s pay and rations for the following six months, where he was treated with great kindness by Lord and Lady Dalhousie, and in after days often referred to this pleasant portion of his life. Subsequently the government appointed him first clerk in the Lanark military settlement of Upper Canada, under the late Colonel William Marshall, the superintendent, and this situation Mr. Shaw filled for nine years. At the commencement of the work on the Rideau Canal, through Lord Dalhousie’s influence, he was appointed overseer of the works under the late Colonel John By, from Smith’s Falls to Bytown, now the city of Ottawa. After the completion of the canal, Mr. Shaw married Ellen Forgie, daughter of Mr. Forgie, of Glasgow, and carried on at Smith’s Falls a successful and extensive mercantile business up to the time of his entering parliament. He was one of the first promoters and directors of the Brockville and Ottawa Railway. During the Canadian rebellion of 1837 and 1838 he was stationed at Brockville as major of the third Leeds Light Infantry, and in later years he was made lieutenant-colonel of the militia of Canada. In his early days he was a member of what was known as the Johnstown District Council, and when the municipal system was adopted he filled the position of reeve of the municipality, which office he held until higher duties obliged him to resign. He was also a justice of the peace, but did not often act in that capacity. Mr. Shaw was a Free Mason, having joined the order as a young man in Ireland. He was a member of the Church of England—not extreme in his views, but unswerving in his support and allegiance to his church. In 1851 he was elected to represent the united counties of Lanark and Renfrew in the Legislature of Canada in the Conservative interest, and was again returned for the South Riding of Lanark in 1854. In 1860 he was elected for the Bathurst division by a large majority to a seat in the upper house, which he held until the confederation of the several provinces, when he was called by Royal proclamation to the Senate of the Dominion of Canada, which position he filled with honour to himself and credit to his country until his death. Mr. Shaw was a gentleman of fine physique and commanding appearance, of sterling principle, unswerving integrity, and by his genial disposition and urbanity of manner, endeared himself to all with whom he became acquainted. He died suddenly at his residence in Smith’s Falls, on the 6th of February, 1878, regretted and revered by all who knew him. His funeral was attended by a large deputation from both branches of the legislature.
“In social haunts the ever welcome guest,
So generous, noble, and of portly mien;
‘One of a thousand’ has been well expressed—
No finer type of gentleman was seen.”
Saint-Pierre, Henri C., Advocate, Montreal, was born in the parish of Rigaud, county of Vaudreuil, province of Quebec, on the 13th of September, 1844, but was brought up at Isle-Bizard, in Jacques-Cartier county. He is the last child but one of a family of nine, composed of seven girls and two boys. His father, Joseph Saint-Pierre, a farmer of Isle-Bizard, died, when his son Henri was only two years old. His mother, Domithilde Denis, is still living. His first ancestor on his father’s side in Canada was Pierre Breillé-Saint-Pierre, who was usually called Pierre Saint-Pierre. He had emigrated from Normandy, and on his arrival in Canada settled at Isle-Bizard. In 1741 he was married to Françoise Thibault, by whom he had a large family. He was killed at the battle of Carillon in 1758. His eldest son, bearing the same name, was married to Marie Josephte Tayon, and from that marriage was born, on the 23rd of August, 1772, Guillaume, the father of Joseph, and the grandfather of the gentleman who is the subject of this sketch. Domithilde Denis, the mother of Mr. Saint-Pierre, belonged to a family of farmers from La Pointe Claire, which traces its origin in Canada as far back as the days of the first French settlements, the first colonist of that name, Jacques Denis, having settled at Lachine in 1689. After the death of his father, Mr. Saint-Pierre was adopted by a near relative, C. Raymond, a merchant at Isle-Bizard, who took charge of his education. At twelve years of age he entered the Montreal College, where he went through a brilliant classical course of study. He was the college mate of the unfortunate patriot, Louis Riel. From his childhood Mr. Saint-Pierre had always exhibited a strong liking for military life; but as he grew older, this liking ripened into an uncontrollable passion; so much so, that on leaving college one of the first things he did was to solicit from his mother and his adopted father the permission to enlist in the United States army. At this time the war between the North and South was raging at its highest pitch. It is almost needless to say that his request was unhesitatingly and peremptorily refused. With no small degree of disappointment and reluctance, he at last chose the study of the law, and was sent to Kingston in Ontario, in order that he might improve his knowledge of the English language. At Kingston he was articled to James Agnew, one of the leading lawyers of that city. He soon got tired of the law, however, and on the very day when he was to undergo his preliminary examination at Osgoode Hall, in Toronto, yielding to his passion for military life, he crossed over to Niagara Falls, and thence took the first train to New York. On his arrival there he enlisted in the 76th New York volunteers, which was then forming part of the first corps in the Potomac army. To his honour be it said, it was only after considerable hesitation that General Johnson, the chief recruiting officer, consented to enlist the runaway school-boy. Mr. Saint-Pierre of course entered the service as a private, but in less than two months he rose to the rank of sergeant. During General Meade’s retreat towards Centreville, in the fall of 1863, he was wounded at the crossing of the Rapahannock, and had only recently resumed duty when in the fight at Mine Run, near Fredericksburg, he was again wounded. He was picked up by a detachment of General Stewart’s rebel cavalry on the field of battle, and was brought to Gordonsville during the night, and on the following day sent to Richmond as a prisoner of war. In his regiment he had been reported as dead, and some time afterwards his name was published in the list of those who had been killed in that fight. The result of this information was that funeral services were held both in the Montreal College and in his native parish, and prayer asked for the salvation of his soul. To give a detailed and circumstantial account of the suffering which Mr. Saint-Pierre had to endure, and all the adventures he had to go through in his numerous attempts to escape from starvation and death in the southern stockades, would require a narrative which could hardly be comprised within the compass of a whole volume; but one may form some idea of it, however, when the names of the following prisons wherein he was successively detained are mentioned: Bell Island and Parmenton building at Richmond, Andersonville in Georgia, and Charleston’s race ground and Florence in South Carolina. After thirteen months of indescribable sufferings, he at last found himself free at Charleston on the day when the city was evacuated by the Southern troops in the spring of 1865. After the war was over, Mr. Saint-Pierre returned to his native country, where he was greeted as one who had risen from the dead. In March, 1866, he resumed his legal studies, and was first articled to the late Sir George Etienne Cartier, but a year afterwards he became a student in the office of the Hon. J. J. C. Abbott, where he remained up to the time of his admission to the bar on the 12th of July, 1870. In 1871 Mr. Saint-Pierre entered in partnership with the Hon. Gédéon Ouimet, then attorney-general, and some time afterwards prime minister for the province of Quebec; and on that gentleman’s appointment as superintendent of education, after his having resigned his office as prime minister, Mr. Saint-Pierre found himself at the head of his law office and the sole possessor of his large clientèle. Mr. Saint-Pierre soon reached the foremost rank in his profession, and to-day the firm of Saint-Pierre, Globensky & Poirier, is one of the leading firms in the district of Montreal. But it is more particularly as a criminalist that Mr. Saint-Pierre has distinguished himself. Few lawyers have been so successful in the practice of that branch of the law; and whether it be in the often arduous task of bringing conviction to the minds of juries, or in that no less difficult one of unravelling a knotty point of law, he has few equals and no superior in his native province. He has frequently acted as Crown attorney and as substitute of the attorney-general for the province of Quebec, both in Montreal and in the adjoining districts. In politics Mr. Saint-Pierre is a Liberal. He was selected to run as the Liberal candidate in Jacques-Cartier, in 1878, for the local house, but was defeated by the former member, L. N. Lecavalier, who succeeded in securing his re-election by a small majority. Since that date Mr. Saint-Pierre has taken very little part in active politics. At the general elections for the federal house in 1887 he was selected as the Candidat National, first in the county of Laprairie, in opposition to Mr. Tassé, the Conservative nominee, and afterwards in the county of Jacques-Cartier, in opposition to Mr. Girouard, but declined in both instances. Mr. Saint-Pierre was married in 1874 to Adeline Albina Lesieur, eldest daughter of Adolphe Lesieur, merchant, of Terrebonne. She is a niece of the late Hon. Thos. Jean-Jacques Loranger, of the Hon. L. O. Loranger, a judge of the Superior Court, and of J. M. Loranger, Q.C. Mrs. Saint-Pierre is a handsome and accomplished lady and an excellent musician. She is often seen at charity concerts, contributing, by her distinguished talent as a pianist, to the enjoyment of the evening; whilst her husband, Mr. Saint-Pierre, who is the possessor of a splendid bass voice, and a cultured singer, varies the entertainment by his singing. Mr. and Mrs. Saint-Pierre were both born and brought up Roman catholics, and they have a family of five children, the eldest of whom, Master Henri, is only nine years old. In 1856 Mrs. Saint-Pierre, the elder, was married to John Wilson, a wealthy farmer of Isle-Bizard. He was a widower and the father of several boys. Two of those boys were married to two of Mrs. Saint-Pierre’s daughters. The youngest of those gentlemen was recently elected deputy-reeve of the county of Prescott, in Ontario. Mrs. Saint-Pierre has survived her second husband, who died in 1858. She has now reached the ripe old age of seventy-nine. She is yet strong and hearty, and lately was invited to the christening of an infant (a girl) who was the grand-daughter of her own grand-daughter. She was thereby given an opportunity seldom offered, even to very aged grand-mothers, that of seeing her fourth generation.
Hemming, Edward John, D.C.L., ex-M.P.P., Advocate, etc., Drummondville, province of Quebec, is the third son of the late Henry Keene Hemming, estate agent, and for many years lessee of extensive brick-fields at Gray’s, Essex on the Thames; and Sophia Wirgman, daughter of Thomas Wirgman, from Stockholm, Sweden, and aunt to Lieut.-Colonel Wirgman, late of the 10th Hussars, in their lifetime of London, England, and Lismore, Ireland (in connection with the Duke of Devonshire estates), and latterly (where they died and were buried), of Great Marlow, Bucks, having previously lived farming near Drummondville, P.Q., for a few years, when they returned to England. There is every reason to believe that his father was directly descended from John Hemming, Shakespeare’s associate and literary executor. An uncle of his father, the Rev. Samuel Hemming, D.D., was chaplain to the Royal Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, and as such intimate with all the then royal dukes, the Duke of Sussex standing godfather to two of his children. His father was also uncle to the late Hon. Judge Dunkin, member of the Privy Council of Canada, etc., etc. (his sister being the judge’s mother), and also cousin to the late Charles F. Smithers, president of the Bank of Montreal. After the lapse of about a hundred years, the two families of Hemming and Smithers have intermarried again, Walter G. A. Hemming, of Toronto, a nephew of the subject of this sketch, having lately married a daughter of Charles F. Smithers. Edward John Hemming was born on the 30th August, 1823, in London, England, that is to say Clapham, Surrey, and was educated at the Clapham Grammar School, under the Rev. Charles Pritchard, M.A., a Cambridge wrangler. Among his schoolmates who have since achieved distinction may be mentioned the Rev. Dr. Bradley, dean of Westminster Abbey; Sir George Groves, of Sydenham Palace fame; and his brother, George Wirgman Hemming, of Lincoln’s Inn, Q.C., lately of Hyde Park, now of South Kensington, London, late fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge, senior wrangler of the university—one of the commissioners named by the Imperial Parliament for revising the statutes of Cambridge University;—editor of the “Equity Law Reports” under the council of the English bar, etc., who married his second cousin, a grand niece of Sir David Baird, the hero of Seringapatam and Corunna. To show the heredity of genius we may mention that one of his sons, now in the Royal Engineers, not only came out first at the final examination at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, but surpassed the one next to him by more than a thousand marks. On leaving school in 1839, Mr. Hemming went to sea as a midshipman, making his two last trips to India in the old East Indiaman, Herefordshire, commanded by Captain Richardson, a cousin. He left her at Bombay in 1843, to join the Seyd Khan, opium clipper trading to China with a Lascar crew, as second officer, under Captain Horsburgh, a nephew of the famous Captain Horsburgh of East India Directory fame. During his voyages, he visited the Cape of Good Hope, Isle of France, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Batavia, Hong Kong, Canton, Amoy, Chusan, Woosing and St. Helena, this latter before the removal of the great Bonaparte. After remaining in China a couple of years, he returned home to his father in Ireland in 1845, where he remained studying farming till 1851. During his residence at Lismore, the Smith O’Brien rebellion broke out, and he then made acquaintance with Nicholas O’Gorman, once secretary to the Catholic Emancipation League, under O’Connell, but then a loyal subject; also of Richard O’Gorman, his nephew, one of the Young Irelanders; who had to flee the country in order to escape prosecution for his action in that rebellion. Richard O’Gorman is now a judge in New York. Liebig’s work on agricultural chemistry, then lately published, having caused a great sensation, he turned his attention to the subject, and the Royal Agricultural Society of England having offered a prize open to all the world on the occasion of the International Exhibition of 1851, for the best essay on chemistry applied to agriculture, Mr. Hemming entered the competition and carried off the prize. This essay may be found in the Parliamentary library at Ottawa. While attending the International Exhibition in 1851, he met his cousin, afterwards Judge Dunkin, who prevailed upon him to enter his office in Montreal as a law student, and he commenced his legal studies in the office of Bethune & Dunkin in the fall of that year. Among his fellow students were the Judges Ramsay, and Papineau, and Julius Scriver, the M.P. for Huntingdon; and he also entered the law course of McGill College, and in 1855, took his degree of B.C.L., being first in honours; and in 1871, took his degree of D.C.L. in course. While he was a law student he was elected president of the Law Students’ Society, succeeding the late Judge Ramsay of the Court of Queen’s Bench; Judge Baby, now of the same court, being elected secretary-treasurer. Shortly after, in May, 1855, he was admitted to the bar, and immediately returned to England, where, on the 19th July, 1855, he was married to Sophia Louisa Robinson (a cousin), eldest daughter of the late Thomas Robinson, of London and Norwood, merchant, and returned to Montreal the same year, and commenced practising law in partnership with A. H. Lunn. He was employed by G. W. Wickstead, Q.C., law clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Canada, on behalf of the government, to compile a digested index of all the statute law in force from the conquest to that date, preparatory to a consolidation of the statutes, which work he accomplished to his satisfaction. In 1851, he entered the active militia force by joining the Montreal Light Infantry Battalion as second lieutenant, and served therein for seven years, until he was gazetted out on leaving limits as unattached, retaining his rank of captain. In 1858, at the suggestion of Judge Dunkin, who, at that time, was member for Drummond and Arthabaska, and who intended residing in Drummond county (and his father having just arrived from England and purchased a farm in the neighbourhood of Drummondville), he left his practice in Montreal and came to Drummondville, which was then nothing but a deserted village in the middle of the woods and out of the world, although practically the chef-lieu of the then newly constituted district of Arthabaska, the only resident lawyers living there; now, thanks to the railroad, Drummondville is a thriving village of two thousand inhabitants, with flourishing manufactures and magnificent water powers, but has lost its pre-eminence in law since the erection of a court house at the chef-lieu, and the formation of a resident bar at Arthabaskaville. Mr. Dunkin, however, being defeated afterwards by J. B. E. Dorion, l’Enfant Terrible, obtained a seat in Brome county and permanently settled in that county at Knowlton. In 1867, on the death of l’Enfant Terrible (the then member for Drummond and Arthabaska), shortly before confederation, Mr. Hemming was invited by a large number of the electors to become a candidate for the Quebec legislature under confederation, and although he was opposed by the late Judge Dorion (a brother of l’Enfant Terrible), on the Liberal side, and by N. Hébert, as a French Conservative, he had a majority over both candidates combined, and stood at the head of the poll with nearly two hundred majority, and this, notwithstanding that the constituency was five-sixths French. During that parliament he took a prominent part in inaugurating the railway fever of that time and the government policy of subsidizing the railways consequent thereon. He obtained a charter for what is now the northern branch of the South Eastern Railway, under the then name of the Richelieu, Drummond and Arthabaska River Railway, one hundred miles in length; successfully (for every one but himself) promoted the scheme and constructed the road, was elected president of the company and gave to L. A. Sénécal the first railway contract he ever had, and finally transferred the road to the South Eastern Company on certain conditions which, we regret to say, were never fully carried out. He also greatly developed the two counties by opening up colonization roads; and took an active part in revising the municipal code. During this time he was elected president of the Agricultural Society of the county of Drummond, No. 1, and held the office until the society was constituted for the whole county. In 1870, a vacancy occuring in the lucrative office of prothonotary for the district of Arthabaska, the Hon. M. Chauveau, the then premier, nominated him to the same, but a difficulty arising in connection with the Hon. G. Irvine, who was then solicitor-general in the Chauveau administration, and who represented a portion of the district, in order to oblige Hon. M. Chauveau, he finally consented to decline the nomination, and to present himself once more in 1871 for re-election against the Hon. W. Laurier, the Liberal candidate, but was defeated by a large majority, principally on the ground of nationality and railway difficulties. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Hemming was elected warden of the county of Drummond, which office he resigned, when two years afterwards, he was appointed district magistrate (the equivalent of county judge in the other provinces) for the districts of Arthabaska and St. Francis, in conjunction with G. E. Rioux, but practically the two districts were divided, Mr. Hemming taking the former, and Mr. Rioux the latter. About the same time it was commonly reported in the press and elsewhere, that he was to be the new Superior Court judge, for the district, as the representative of the Protestant element among the six new judges, but at the end the Protestant element was eliminated altogether. While holding the office of district magistrate he was named sole commissioner by the Quebec government to investigate and report on the management and working of the prothonotary’s and other offices in the Montreal court-house, including the police office. Mr. Bréhaut (a Protestant) having resigned his office of police magistrate, and received another appointment in consequence of this report, it was again positively reported that Mr. Hemming was to be appointed police magistrate in his stead, but at the very last moment Judge Desnoyers was substituted. In 1878, during Mr. Joly’s short régime, when great efforts were made to introduce the American system, “to the victors belong the spoils,” Mr. Hemming and thirteen other district magistrates had their commissions revoked, on the ground of economy, without receiving any indemnity whatever for the loss of their office, and Mr. Rioux, being a Liberal, was awarded Mr. Hemming’s district in addition to his own, thus eliminating the only Protestant on the police bench in the whole province of Quebec. Strange to say, the succeeding Conservative administration in Quebec never took any steps either to reinstate or indemnify Mr. Hemming for the loss of his office, although nearly all his French colleagues were provided for one way or the other. As he had to commence his practice anew he retired from public life for some years; but in 1881, at the urgent request of the local government, consented to run against the Hon. George Irvine in the Conservative interest in Megantic, but was again defeated, not having received the support promised him, and having entered into the contest only a week before the polling. In this year he was named census commissioner for the county of Drummond by the Dominion government; and in 1885 revising officer for the same county under the Franchise Act. Having a short time previously consented to take a part in municipal matters again, he was elected mayor of Drummondville and warden of the county for the second time. He was also elected syndic of the Bar of Arthabaska, which office he held until his recent appointment as joint prothonotary and Clerk of the Crown for that district. Mr. Hemming has for some years past been an associate member of the Protestant Committee of the Council of Public Instruction for the province of Quebec, where he has been working for some time past to procure the introduction of religious teaching in the Protestant public schools, and has so far succeeded as to have the Bible placed upon the list of authorized text books. In religious matters Mr. Hemming is a member of the Church of England, and has acted for many years past as lay reader whenever his services have been required. And on one occasion in the absence of a clergyman after the church at Drummondville was destroyed by fire, conducted the services for nearly a year, and thereby kept the congregation together. He was churchwarden of St. George’s Church, Drummondville, for eighteen years, and has been elected a delegate to the Diocesan Synod of Quebec and to the Provincial Synod since 1862 without any intermission, and during these 25 years has never failed attending a single session of either of these synods. Mr. Hemming is old-fashioned enough to believe in the Bible, and consequently has no faith in Darwinism, secular education or prohibition. With regard to the latter, he says he cannot bring himself to believe that the Saviour was a criminal when he made and drank wine at the marriage feast, nor when he commanded his disciples to drink wine in his memory at the Lord’s Supper. In politics, he is and has always been a Conservative, and does not believe in the principles of the French or American revolutions, nor in the divine right of the people, and he believes that authority ought to come from above and not from below. Mr. Hemming cannot understand the theory of allowing the fools to elect the wise men, nor why a majority should have the right to utterly crush out the minority, and still less why a small minority that happens to hold the balance of power under our constitution, should have the power of controlling the overwhelming majority of the nation. Neither does he believe in Adam Smith. He has been a protectionist ever since the times of Sir Robert Peel, D’Israeli and Lord George Bentinck, and has never seen any occasion to change his opinion, notwithstanding it was considered rank heresy to say so. After a lifetime he begins to see signs that the British are beginning to discover that our social system is founded on the family, each with its own interest (the nation being merely an extension of that idea), and that until the whole world becomes one family, the theory of free trade which is based on that idea must be inapplicable. It will be seen by the foregoing that Mr. Hemming has led a pretty active life, which may be considered as decidedly professional, having been a sailor, soldier, farmer, lawyer, legislator, judge, doctor (in law) and (lay) parson. His sons are taking different branches of the professions. His eldest son being a law student, another is in the Canadian army, being a lieutenant in the Infantry School corps, and a third in the Canadian marine, being second officer on board of one of the government cruisers for the protection of the fisheries.