Mr. Hébert is president of the Dominion Wholesale Grocers Guild, chairman of the prize committee for the province of Quebec, president of the Montreal Wholesale Grocers Guild, president of the Montreal Wholesale Liquor Association, treasurer and governor of Notre Dame Hospital, governor of the Montreal General Hospital and governor of Laval University. He is also a member of the Canada Club, the Montreal Jockey Club and L’Association St. Jean Baptiste.
Mr. Hébert married Miss Blanche Robidoux and their four children are, Marielle, Gertrude, Charles P. and Jacques R.
REV. WILLIAM O’MEARA.
A man of scholarly attainments, great force of personality and broadness of mind, Rev. William O’Meara has made these qualities the basis of many years of successful work as rector of St. Gabriel’s church in Montreal and in the promotion of the work along many lines in which the Catholic church is interested. He was born in Sherrington, Quebec province, May 6, 1857, and is one of twelve children born to the late Captain William and Judith (McManus) O’Meara, the former a native of Waterford, Ireland, who came to Canada in 1832.
Rev. William O’Meara acquired his early education in the grammar schools of Sherrington, and later entered the College of Ste. Thérèse, where he took a classical course, graduating with the degree of B. A. in 1880. He then entered Grand Seminary in Montreal, where he pursued his theological studies for three years and a half, being ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood December 22, 1883. He was first made curate at St. Ann’s church in this city and was then transferred to St. Cecelia’s parish in Valleyfield, where he remained as assistant from 1884 to 1889. In the latter year he came to St. Gabriel’s church, Montreal, and in January, 1890, was made rector, a position which he still holds. This parish was organized in 1873 as a mission from St. Henry’s parish and was made an independent congregation two years later. The first church was a wooden structure, presided over by Rev. John J. Salmon, and here services were held until 1891, Rev. Thomas McCarthy succeeding the first parish priest. The new church was started in 1891 by Father O’Meara and was completed in 1894, at a cost of one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars. It is a beautiful structure, built of limestone, in the Roman and Byzantine styles of architecture, having a capacity of one thousand people and the dimensions being one hundred and sixty by seventy feet. There is a main altar of white wood, a chancel rail of oak and stations of the cross which are fine specimens of work in terra cotta. Father O’Meara built in 1895 a parish house costing eleven thousand five hundred dollars, and the entire church property is valued at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The affairs of the congregation, which numbers eight hundred families, are administered in a capable and farsighted way, Father O’Meara having proven himself a reliable business man as well as an earnest and consecrated worker in the cause of religion. He is particularly interested in the schools of his parish and has now erected two excellent institutions of learning, which are conducted in connection with his church. These are a school for boys, built at a cost of thirty-seven thousand dollars, and an academy for girls, representing a value of fifty-five thousand dollars.
Father O’Meara was formerly a governor of the Catholic high school of Montreal and was on July 1, 1905, appointed a Catholic school commissioner. He was elected chairman of the commission in 1910 and since that time has been accounted one of the prominent educators of the city as well as one of the greatest individual forces in the promotion of Catholic education. He has given a great deal of time and attention to this work and in 1907 was sent as a delegate to the Dublin International Exposition in order to study the national school systems of Ireland, France, England and Belgium. He is interested in the work of St. Gabriel’s Total Abstinence and Benefit Society, of which he is president, and he has recently been appointed honorary canon of the archdiocese of Montreal. He has, indeed, accomplished a great deal of important and constructive work among the people of his parish, and he holds their love in large measure, while he enjoys the confidence and respect of people of all denominations. He has demonstrated that the business affairs of St. Gabriel’s parish are in the hands of a farsighted, capable and energetic man, while his religious zeal is evidenced in his constant and untiring labor in the promulgation of the doctrines in which he believes. He is widely and favorably known in Montreal and has earned mention by the Montreal Gazette as “a broad-minded, well informed, energetic and popular priest.”
LOUIS BEAUDOIN.
In commercial circles of Montreal, Louis Beaudoin is widely known as president of Beaudoin Limited, accountants and auditors. Louis Beaudoin of this review occupies the executive position in this firm, and Gérant L. M. Philéas Beaudoin is secretary-treasurer. They maintain offices at 33 Notre Dame Street West and have been eminently successful in their line, enjoying an extensive and important clientage. Louis Beaudoin was born August 29, 1869, in Repentigny, L’Assomption county, Quebec, and is a son of Pierre and Melina (Lachapelle dit Jeannotte) Beaudoin, the former a well known agriculturist of Repentigny. The paternal grandparents of our subject were Pierre and Adelaide (Rochon) Beaudoin, the former also a farmer of Repentigny. The great-grandfather, Jean Baptiste Beaudoin, also followed that occupation at the same place. The maternal grandfather, Pierre Lachapelle, was an agriculturist of Mascouche. The Beaudoin family is historically known in two variations, that of Baudoin and Bodin. The earliest record of a member of this family goes back to Alexis Beaudoin, born in 1694, who on November 27, 1720, married at Ste. Croix, Angeline Houde and had seven children. Of these his son Louis married Louise Barrat, at Montreal, on May 6, 1748, this being the first mention of the family in Montreal archives.