Wickwire, William Nathan, M.D., Halifax, Nova Scotia, was born at Cornwallis, Kings county, N.S., on the 18th November, 1839. His parents were Peter and Eliza Wickwire. Dr. Wickwire received his education, chiefly at Horton Academy and Acadia College, Wolfville, N.S., and graduated at the latter in 1860, taking the degree of B.A. In 1863 Acadia College also conferred upon him the degree of M.A. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1860 to 1864, and there received the degree of M.D. In the autumn of 1864 he formed a medical co-partnership with Dr. Tupper (now Sir Charles), at Halifax, which partnership existed till Dr. Tupper took up his residence at Ottawa, in 1870. For several years he was surgeon to a volunteer company; from 1867 to 1872 he held the office of assistant inspecting physician for the port of Halifax, and since that date to the present time has held the position of inspecting physician for the same port. For several years the doctor has been vice-consul for the Netherlands at Halifax. He enjoys a good practice. In politics Dr. Wickwire is a Liberal-Conservative; and in religion an adherent of the Episcopal church. He was married in 1870 to Margaret Louisa, daughter of the late Hon. Alexander Keith, of Halifax.
Mathieu, Hon. Michel, Judge of the Superior Court, Montreal, was born at Sorel, Richelieu county, on the 20th December, 1838, from the union of Joseph Mathieu, farmer, and justice of the peace, residing at Sorel, and Edwidge Vandal. Mr. Mathieu the elder was a farmer of little means, but had his son educated under the care of the Rev. Messire Augustin Lemay, formerly curé of the parish of Ste. Victoire (which was founded by the dismemberment of the old parish of St. Pierre de Sorel), where Mr. Mathieu had resided. His ancestors were of an ancient French family. The subject of our sketch completed his course of classical studies at the college of St. Hyacinthe. Leaving that institution in 1860, he matriculated, and was admitted to the study of the profession of a notary in the office of Jean George Crébassa, notary public, of the town of Sorel, and was admitted to practice on the 20th of January, 1864. In 1861 he had been also admitted to the study of law. He practised as a notary for a year, when he was admitted to the bar of the province of Quebec, and abandoned his former profession to engage exclusively in law practice. On the 11th of June, 1866, he was appointed sheriff of the district of Richelieu, in the place of Pierre Rémi Chevalier, who had resigned in his favour, and held that position until the 14th of August, 1872. The entrance of Mr. Mathieu into political life dates from that period, when he entered the lists and was elected to the House of Commons over his opponent, George Isidore Barthe, who, in turn, defeated him in 1874. In the following year he was elected by acclamation member of the Legislative Assembly of the province of Quebec for Richelieu county; and again, on the 1st of May, 1878, by a majority of 186 over Pierre Bergeron, a physician of St. Aimé. Mr. Mathieu always wielded a powerful influence in his county, and was mainly instrumental in securing the election of L. H. Massue to the House of Commons at Ottawa in the election of the 1st of September, 1878. In politics he is a Conservative, and has always been a faithful adherent and a strong supporter of the late Sir George Etienne Cartier and Sir John A. Macdonald. On the 11th of October, 1880, he was made a Queen’s counsel, and on 3rd October, 1881, he accepted the position of justice of the Superior Court of the province of Quebec, and removed to Montreal, where he resides at the present time. Until his elevation to the judicial bench, he was one of the directors of the Montreal, Portland and Boston and of the South-Eastern Railway Companies. He also published La Revue Légale for many years. Of undaunted energy, and possessed of sterling capacities, Hon. Mr. Mathieu always took a deep interest in the advancement of his native town, and occupied its civic chair during seven years, from 1875 to 1881. He was also one of the founders of the College of Sorel. As a private citizen he is esteemed for his affability and kindness of manners to all who require his advice, or have business to transact with him, and his courteousness has made him hosts of friends everywhere. Justice Mathieu was twice married—the first time, on the 22nd of June, 1863, to Marie Rose Délima Thirza, a daughter of the late Captain St. Louis, of Sorel; she died on the 23rd of March, 1870. By his first marriage he has three children, one son and two daughters, living. On the 30th October, 1881, he married Marie Amélie Antoinette, a daughter of the Hon. David Armstrong, member of the Legislative Council of the province of Quebec, and of Léocadie de Ligny. The fruit of his second union was one son, living. Madame Mathieu’s name is always to be found among the charity workers of the city of Montreal, and she is blessed by the poor.
Johnston, Hon. James William, Judge in Equity, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. The late Judge Johnston was by descent a Scotchman, and by birth a West Indian. His grandfather, Dr. Lewis Johnston, was born in Scotland, and claimed to be entitled to the now long dormant title of Marquis of Annandale, but never pressed his claim in the courts. He married Laleah Peyton, a lady of Huguenot descent, and settled in Savannah, Georgia, then a British colony, where he owned an estate called Annandale. Previous to the rebellion, Dr. Johnston filled the office of president of the council and treasurer of the colony of Georgia. On the breaking out of the revolutionary war his sons all entered the British army and fought on the side of the king. His eldest son, William Martin Johnston, the father of Judge Johnston, held the rank of captain of the New York volunteers in the year 1775. He was engaged in the defence of Savannah, was at the capture of Fort Montgomery on the Hudson, and took part in various other engagements during the war. At its close Dr. Johnston returned to Scotland, and Captain Johnston, who had lost all his property in consequence of espousing the cause of Britain, studied medicine, and graduated in the University of Edinburgh. He married Elizabeth Lichtenstein, the only daughter of Captain John Lichtenstein, of the noble and ancient Austrian family of that name. Captain Johnston subsequently removed to Kingston in the island of Jamaica, where his son James was born on the 29th of August, 1792. He was early sent to Scotland for his education, and was placed under the care of the late Rev. Dr. Duncan, of Ruthwell. The family afterwards settled permanently in Nova Scotia. James William Johnston studied law in Annapolis in the office of Thomas Ritchie, afterwards one of the judges of the Common Pleas, and was admitted to the bar in 1815. He commenced the practice of his profession in Kentville, the shire town of Kings county, but shortly after removed to Halifax and entered into partnership with Simon Bradstreet Robie, at that time the leading practitioner in the province. Mr. Johnston rose rapidly in his profession, and soon attained the highest rank, which he continued to hold unchallenged until his elevation to the bench of the Supreme Court. In cross-examination he displayed peculiar tact and skill, extracting from the most reluctant and perverse witness the minutest facts within his knowledge. Among the intellectual features that marked his professional career may be noted a strong and comprehensive grasp, a memory that seemed ever obedient to his will, together with a rapidity of perception, that gave wonderful readiness at repartee, seizing like lightning on the mistakes or unwise or weak arguments of an opponent, and turning them to the disadvantage of the opposite side, and to the manifest advantage of his own. This mental superiority, aided as it was by untiring perseverance and industry, was alone sufficient to win the highest honours of the bar. Few, if any, of Mr. Johnston’s forensic efforts have been preserved; but in cases where the battle was to be fought against wrong and oppression, he was especially powerful; rising to the occasion his bursts of impassioned eloquence swept with the force of a tornado carrying all before it. In the year 1835 Mr. Johnston was appointed solicitor-general of the province, which office was then non-political; but in the year 1838, at the earnest solicitation of Sir Colin Campbell, then lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, he entered the Legislative Council and commenced his political life, and at once became the acknowledged leader of the Conservative party. On the elevation of the Hon. S. G. W. Archibald to the Court of Chancery as master of the rolls in 1843, Mr. Johnston was appointed attorney-general, and at the general election held in that year, resigned his seat in the Legislative Council, and stood for the important county of Annapolis, for which he was returned by a large majority, and which constituency he continued uninterruptedly to represent in the House of Assembly until 1863, when he took his seat on the bench. One of the first acts he placed on the statute book was the Simultaneous Polling Act, which provided for the holding of elections throughout the province on one and the same day, instead of being as theretofore held at different times, and the polls moved round in different places in each constituency, entailing large additional expense and much loss of time. He also successfully advocated the introduction of denominational colleges, and their partial endowment by the state. Hon. Mr. Johnston was one of the delegates selected to meet Lord Durham, the high commissioner for settling the difficulties in Canada, and to confer with him on the contemplated changes in colonial government. Hon. Mr. Johnston might justly have claimed the honour of being the first statesman who in the halls of legislature advocated the union or confederation of the North American colonies. In the year 1854, on the floor of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly, in a speech which for breadth of conception, deep research, fervent patriotism, and glowing eloquence, has rarely been equalled, and which by many has been considered his greatest effort, Hon. Mr. Johnston moved: —
That the union of the British North American provinces on just principles, while calculated to perpetuate their connection with the parent state, would promote their advancement and prosperity, increase their strength and influence, and elevate their position.
And though before the union was consummated he had retired from public life, and was therefore in no way responsible for the details of the scheme, yet his advocacy of the measure on its broad basis tended in no slight degree to create and educate public opinion, and smoothed the way for those who eventually succeeded in effecting the important change in the constitution he was the first to advocate. In the year 1857 Hon. Mr. Johnston, then attorney-general and leader of the government, pursuant to a resolution passed in the House of Assembly, proceeded to England to adjust the differences that for years existed between the province and the General Mining Association, who, as assignees of the Duke of York, to whom they had been granted, claimed the exclusive right to the mines and minerals of Nova Scotia, and who, by virtue thereof, possessed a practical monopoly of the coal trade. After a protracted negotiation, a compromise was effected and an agreement entered into by which the General Mining Association ceded to the government all their right and title to, and over, all the unworked mines and minerals. Thus was a grievance of long standing amicably settled, and their right to the great wealth hidden in the bowels of the earth secured to the people of Nova Scotia. In the year 1863, after a labourious and active professional life, and a somewhat turbulent political career, Hon. Mr. Johnston accepted a seat on the bench as judge in Equity and judge of the Supreme Court. The duties of his office were discharged with assiduity and the strictest integrity, and his decisions were received by the bar as clear, logical, and exhaustive expositions of the law. In the summer of 1872, Hon. Mr. Johnston obtained leave of absence, and proceeded to the south of France in the hopes that a milder and more genial climate might remove a bronchial affection from which he was suffering, but the beneficial results anticipated did not follow. He was offered in the following year the lieutenant-governorship of his adopted country, vacant by the demise of the late Hon. Joseph Howe, but this position the state of his health compelled him to decline. Early in life Mr. Johnston connected himself with the Baptist Church, and to the end continued a member of that communion. For years he devoted his time, energies and talents to the advancement of that body, socially, politically and educationally. The Baptist Academy at Wolfville, as well as Acadia College, owe their existence in a large measure to his personal labours, influence, and untiring exertions both in parliament and out. Of the latter institution he was one of the first governors, and continued to hold the office uninterruptedly, by repeated re-elections, to the time of his death. He was several times elected president of the Baptist Convention of the Maritime provinces, who, on his leaving the country, marked their great appreciation of his character and their sense of their lasting obligations to him by the unanimous adoption of the following resolution: —
This convention, having learnt that the health of our esteemed brother, Hon. Judge Johnston, a member of the Board of Governors of Acadia College, has induced him to seek a residence in Europe, Therefore resolve that we take this opportunity to tender to him the tribute which his high character, and long continued and important services in the cause of education seem to demand, by thus recording the sense we entertain of the value of those services, his devoted and consecrated talents, and of his great worth as a man, as a Christian gentleman, and especially as a Christian legislator and judge, the influence and grateful memory of which we trust will not be effaced; and although at his advanced age it may almost seem to be hoping against hope, yet this convention would still trust that a perfect restoration to health and strength may yet, in the good providence of God, return our valued brother, as well as his excellent lady, to their former position and relations in this country.
Hon. Mr. Johnston was twice married. His first wife was Amelia Elizabeth, daughter of the late William James Almon, surgeon, who was assistant surgeon to the Royal Artillery in New York, in June, 1776, and Rebecca Byles, granddaughter of the Rev. Dr. Byles, of Boston, Massachusetts. By her he had three sons, the eldest of whom is now the judge of the County Court for the metropolitan city and county of Halifax, and three daughters. Of these, two sons and one daughter are alive. His second wife was Louise, widow of the late Captain Wentworth, of the Royal Artillery, by whom he had one daughter and three sons; the daughter and two sons are living. Mr. Johnston’s physicians advised that his state of health would not permit of his return to Nova Scotia, and he determined to pass the winter of 1873 at Cheltenham, England, where, on the 21st day of November, in that year, at the ripe age of eighty-one years, and in the full possession of his mental faculties, he died, full of honours, leaving behind him a name untarnished, a character above reproach, and a reputation as a statesman, jurist and judge worthy of emulation by those who shall hereafter fill the places vacated by him.