Gilpin, Rev. Edwin, D.D., Senior Canon of St. Luke’s Cathedral and Archdeacon of Nova Scotia, Halifax. This learned divine was born in Aylesford, Nova Scotia, on the 10th of June, 1821. His parents were Edwin and Eliza Gilpin. On his father’s side he is descended from a long line of illustrious ancestors, among others Richard De Guylpyn, to whom in 1206 the Baron of Kendal gave the manor of Kentmore, in Westmoreland, England. There fourteen generations of the family lived, and there was born, in 1517, Bernard Gilpin, well known as the “Apostle of the North.” The manor was lost in consequence of the loyalty of the family to King Charles the First. The Rev. Edwin Gilpin, the subject of our sketch, was educated at King’s College, Windsor, N.S., and in 1847 received the degree of B.A., in 1850 the degree of M.A., in 1853 that of B.D., and in 1863 the degree of D.D. was conferred upon him. In 1848 he received the appointment of master of the Halifax Grammar School; then he was made master of the Halifax High School, and then followed his promotion to the principalship of the Halifax Academy. In 1864 he was inducted as canon of St. Luke’s Cathedral (Episcopal); and in 1874 he was made archdeacon. He has taken an active interest in education, and done a good deal to place the public schools of his native province on a satisfactory footing. Rev. Mr. Gilpin is a firm adherent of the Church of England, and belongs to the so-called High Church party. He is married to Amelia, daughter of the late Hon. Justice Haliburton, of Windsor, N.S., who is well known as an author under the nom de plume of “Sam Slick.” Rev. Mr. Gilpin’s eldest son is a gentleman of considerable literary ability, and has prepared for and read before the North British Society of Engineers and the Royal Society of Canada, papers on the mining industries of the Dominion.
Lambly, William Harwood, Registrar of the County of Megantic, Inverness, Province of Quebec, was born on the 1st December, 1839, at Halifax, Megantic county, Quebec, and has resided in the same county ever since. His parents were John Robert Lambly and Anne Mackie. Mr. Lambly, senr., was for nearly twenty years registrar of deeds for the county of Megantic, and his father, the grandfather of the subject of our sketch, was for more than a quarter of a century harbour master of the port of Quebec, and in his day published a complete guide, with descriptive charts, of the river St. Lawrence, from Quebec to the Gulf. The family removed, when William was a child, to Leeds, in which place he lived until 1861, when the chef-lieu of the county was established at Inverness, whither he removed. He commenced his education in the village school, then attended the seminary at Newport, Vermont, and afterwards took a special course at Victoria College, Cobourg, Ontario, including some branches of the higher mathematics, French, and the classics. In 1862 he was appointed registrar of the county of Megantic by the Hon. Charles Stanley, Viscount Monck, then governor-general of Canada, and has held the office ever since. He has been returning officer at every election in the county, local and federal, since that time, and although many of the elections have been contested, no complaint has ever been made of partiality or irregularity. He was appointed a justice of the peace in 1863, and has held the appointment ever since. Since that time he has tried over two hundred cases, many of them being for infractions of the license law, and no judgment of his has ever been set aside on certiorari or appeal. He is also a commissioner of the Superior Court, and a commissioner per dedimus potestatem. He was elected a municipal councillor for Inverness on an anti-license ticket, in 1866, by a large majority, and was appointed mayor of the township at the first meeting of the council thereafter, and continued in the office of mayor during his term of office as councillor. In 1868 he declined re-election, and was appointed secretary-treasurer of the council, and also of the school commissioners of Inverness, and has held these offices ever since. Under the Dominion License Act of 1863, he was appointed first commissioner of the county of Megantic, and then president of the license board and by his vote and influence not a single license was issued in the county from the time he became president of the board until the law was declared ultra vires, and was abandoned. He is a member of the Association of Registrars of the Province of Quebec, and in 1866 was unanimously elected president of the association, and has been re-elected unanimously in 1887. He joined the Sons of Temperance in 1855, and has held various offices in his division, and the Good Templars in 1869, and was rapidly promoted in his lodge. In 1878 he first attended the Grand Lodge of the Province of Quebec, and was unanimously elected grand worthy councillor. In the following year he was unanimously elected grand worthy chief templar of the province, and held that office by unanimous elections for seven consecutive years, declining the election for the eighth term. In 1879 he was elected representative to the Right Worthy Grand Lodge, and has since attended every session of that body. In the Right Worthy Grand Lodge he was appointed right worthy grand marshal in 1881, and again in 1882; right worthy grand messenger in 1883, and right worthy grand councillor, being the second highest position in the body, in 1885, and again in 1886, and which office he still holds, and he has this year (1887) been appointed deputy right worthy grand templar for the Province of Quebec. He was one of the representatives of the R. W. G. Lodge in Boston, in 1886, at the conference on union of all Good Templars in the world, and was one of the signers of the original basis of union. He has organised a number of Good Templar lodges in the Provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia, and has given many lectures and addresses on temperance and prohibition in various parts of the Dominion, and in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Va.; Charlestown, S.C., Chicago and other places. He is a vice-president of the Quebec branch of the Dominion Alliance for the total suppression of the liquor traffic, and has successfully fought and stamped out every grog shop in Inverness, although there were nearly a score of them in the place when he came there to live in 1861. He is not a politician, and never takes part in any political discussions. He has travelled considerably in Canada, having visited the chief cities from Halifax, N.S., to Sarnia, Ont., besides many of the great cities in the United States. He is a Methodist with broad Armenian views, but claims every man as a brother, no matter what church he belongs to, if he loves the Lord Jesus Christ. It will be seen that Mr. Lambly is an enthusiastic temperance man. He totally abstains from all intoxicants and narcotics, and has never tasted any kind of spirituous liquors, wine, or cider. Consequently he is an out and out prohibitionist, will never consent to license, in any shape or form, for the sale of liquors. He has an undying hate to what he calls the thrice accursed traffic in strong drink, and deals it deadly blows on every opportune occasion. He hopes to see the bright and glorious day dawn on this fair Dominion when we shall have prohibition pure and simple from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the 25th June, 1863, he was married at Lachute, P.Q., to Isabella D. Brown, daughter of the Rev. W. D. Brown, a Methodist minister now in his 79th year, yet actively engaged preaching the gospel. The fruit of this marriage has been four sons and three daughters, one of whom died in infancy, and the two eldest sons are now studying for the ministry of the Methodist church.
Jarvis, Frederick William, late Sheriff of the county of York, Ontario, was born at Oakville, on the 10th February, 1818. His grandfather was a devoted U. E. loyalist, and after the American revolution, left the state of Connecticut for New Brunswick, from which province he afterwards moved with his family, then including as boys, the late Sheriff W. B. Jarvis of Toronto, the late Judge Jarvis of Cornwall, and the late Frederick Starr Jarvis, father of the sheriff now deceased, to Toronto, in 1808. Frederick Starr Jarvis afterwards settled at Oakville, then a wilderness, with no road through the bush, and with few of the modern appliances for the ordinary pursuits of forest life. Here William Frederick, the eldest of a family of eight sons and four daughters, was born, and here he remained on the paternal farm until 1849, when he removed to Toronto to take charge of his uncle’s business as deputy sheriff. In 1856, on the death of his uncle, he was appointed sheriff of the counties of York and Peel, and when the sheriffdom was divided he was made sheriff of York, and this office he held until his death, in Toronto, on 16th of April, 1887. During the rebellion of 1837, Sheriff Jarvis served in the Queen’s Rangers. Before coming to Toronto he married a daughter of Captain John Skynner, R.N., who, with three sons and one daughter, survive him. He was a much respected citizen, and as highly esteemed as he was well known. He filled the position of Sheriff of York—the richest shrievalty at the disposal of the Ontario government—with dignity and ability. He was a member of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Carlton street, in whose welfare he always took a deep interest, as well as of the Industrial School at Mimico, and of a number of city charities.
Church, Hon. Charles Edward, Commissioner of Public Works and Mines, of Nova Scotia, Halifax, was born on Tancook Island, Lunenburg county, Nova Scotia, on the 3rd of January, 1835. He is a son of Charles Lot Anthony Church, whose ancestors came to America with the Pilgrim Fathers in 1625. His great grandfather, Charles Church, was a United Empire loyalist, who left New England on the breaking out of the rebellion, and settled at Shelburne, Nova Scotia. His grandfather, Charles Lot Church, who was only five years of age when he came to Nova Scotia with his parents, on growing up into manhood, settled in Chester, Lunenburg county, Nova Scotia, and afterwards represented that county for ten years in the House of Assembly. This gentleman was one of the early Reformers of the province. His mother, Sarah Hiltz, is of German descent, her ancestors having emigrated from Germany to Lunenburg in 1753, and was amongst its first settlers. Their descendants are noted for their mechanical skill, especially in shipbuilding. Charles Edward Church, the subject of this sketch, received a fair English education at the schools in Chester and Truro, and afterwards followed for about ten years the profession of teacher. He then went into mercantile pursuits at La Have River, and for several years was interested in the fisheries. In 1871, Mr. Church was appointed a justice of the peace. He was, in 1872, elected to represent Lunenburg in the Liberal interest, in the House of Commons, at Ottawa; and again at the general election in 1874, he was returned by acclamation, and sat in the Dominion parliament until 1878. In 1882, Mr. Church was elected a member of the Nova Scotia legislature, and again in 1886, he was returned to the same position by a large majority. He was appointed provincial secretary in 1882, and held the office until 1884, when he was appointed Commissioner of Public Works and Mines, and this office he still holds. Mr. Church is a Liberal in politics, and for the past twenty years, has taken an active interest in both federal and provincial questions, and stands high as a progressive statesman. He also takes an interest in all moral reforms, and was formerly a member of the order of Sons of Temperance and of the Good Templars, and held office in the Grand Division of Sons of Temperance, of Nova Scotia, and also in the Grand Lodge of British Templars of the same province. Though not taking as warm an interest in the temperance movement as formerly, he is still a strict total abstainer. Mr. Church has travelled over a considerable portion of the Dominion of Canada, and through parts of the United States. He is a Protestant, holding broad and liberal views respecting religion as well as politics. On the 24th of June, 1884, he was married to Henrietta A. Pugsley, of Halifax. Her father, Henry Pugsley, was a native of England, and her mother a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Buller, Frank, M.D., Professor of Ophthalmology and Otology in McGill University, Montreal, was born near Cobourg, Ontario, on the 4th May, 1844. He is the fourth son of Charles G. Buller, of Campbellford, Ontario, who was educated for the Church of England ministry, but, declining holy orders, came to Canada in 1831, and settled near the town of Cobourg, preferring agricultural life to any other means of earning a livelihood. His mother, Frances Elizabeth Boucher, is the second daughter of the late R. P. Boucher, of Campbellford; both his parents are still living, and have attained an advanced age. We may say that the Buller family has for centuries occupied a prominent position in the south of England, and it is a well-known fact that many of its members have distinguished themselves by their energy and ability in the service of their country. Dr. Buller received the foundation of a liberal education under the paternal roof, and subsequently continued his studies in the High School at Peterborough. Having chosen medicine as a profession, he entered the Victoria School of Medicine, of Toronto, and graduated from that institution in 1869. Shortly afterwards he went to England to perfect himself in his profession, where he soon won the diploma of membership of the Royal College of Surgeons. While in London he spent considerable time in the further study of general medicine and surgery in St. Thomas’s Hospital, and satisfied himself that there was no such thing possible as the attainment of perfection in all the branches of a science so far-reaching as that of medicine. He resolved to devote himself to the study of a specialty, having reason to believe that the medical profession in Canada would be willing to sustain any specialist who could bring evidence of having received a sufficiently thorough training to merit public confidence. Keeping this idea steadily in view, he spared no pains to become thoroughly proficient in the specialty he had chosen. At that time the renowned Von Gräfe was still living, and shedding the lustre of his great fame over the University of Berlin; Helmholtze, too, the discoverer of the ophthalmoscope, honoured the chair of physical science in the same place of learning. To receive instruction from two such men was to drink from the very source of the fountain of knowledge; and to Berlin Dr. Buller went in 1870; nor was he disappointed in his anticipations of the benefit to be derived from the instructions of these illustrious preceptors. About this time the Franco-German war broke out, and the services of every available medical man having been called for, Dr. Buller, like many other foreigners, volunteered his services; and during eight months he acted as assistant-surgeon in the military hospitals of North Germany. After the termination of the war he continued his studies in Berlin, and served for one year as assistant in the Gräfe-Ewers Ophthalmic Hospital of that city. Early in 1872 he returned to England, and was appointed clinical assistant to the Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, from which position he was promoted to the office of junior, and soon afterwards to that of senior house surgeon, a situation which he held with credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of the governors and staff of that institution for nearly three years. Having thus acquired, in a few years, an amount of special knowledge and experience that under less favourable circumstances could not have been gained in a lifetime, he was prepared to take advantage of the first opportunity that offered for establishing himself in the practice of his profession. He then returned to Canada, and chose the city of Montreal as the field of his future operations. Early in 1876 he commenced practice there, and, owing to the cordial goodwill of his professional confrères, obtained a lucrative practice from the very outset. In the month of May of the same year he was appointed ophthalmic and aural surgeon to the Montreal General Hospital, and lecturer on diseases of the eye and ear in McGill University—positions which he still holds; and, judging from the past, we anticipate for him a long career of honour and great usefulness to suffering humanity. To his credit it should be said, that Dr. Buller has been the arbitrator of his own fortune, he having in a great degree bore his own expenses while securing his education. He is a good example to our Canadian youth, and shews plainly what a young man can accomplish though starting with a capital consisting only of determination and pluck. Dr. Buller, in religious matters, is an adherent of the Episcopal church, and in politics may be classed among the liberals. He married Lillie Langlois, daughter of the late Peter Langlois, of Quebec, and has a family of two children.