DOUGALL CUSHING.
One of the most able, successful and progressive of the younger generation of professional men in Montreal is Dougall Cushing, connected with important legal interests as a member of the firm of Barron & Cushing, notaries. He is a native son of the city, born May 3, 1886, his parents being Charles and Lily (Macaulay) Cushing. The family is of old American establishment, the great-grandfather of the subject of this review, Job Cushing, having been born in Massachusetts in 1765. The father was born in May, 1848, and he was for a number of years the senior member of the firm of Cushing & Barron and known as an able and reliable notary. He was in addition a director in the Sun Life Assurance Company, on the board of governors of the Young Men’s Christian Association and deacon in Calvary Congregational church, a man of wide interests, high standards and useful and important accomplishments. His death occurred September 30, 1910. He and his wife became the parents of seven children, R. Macaulay, Dougall of this review, Charles, Arthur, Eric, Geoffrey and Edith.
Dougall Cushing was reared in his parents’ home and acquired his preliminary education in the grammar and high schools of Montreal. He afterward attended McGill University, from which he was graduated B. A. in 1907 and B. C. L. in 1910. In the following year he established himself as a notary in his native city, associating himself with Robert H. Barron, his father’s former partner. The firm of Barron & Cushing is today, as it has been for many years past, one of the strongest of its kind in the city, for Dougall Cushing has followed closely in his father’s footsteps, and has proved himself brilliant, reliable and energetic in the conduct of his professional interests.
Mr. Cushing belongs to Phi Kappa Pi, which he joined in McGill University and is a member of the Seventeenth Regiment, Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars. He is one of the popular and enterprising young men of Montreal and has already gained a creditable place in a profession in which his superior merit and ability will undoubtedly win for him ultimate distinction.
HON. SAMUEL GALE.
Hon. Samuel Gale, one of the ablest members of the legal profession in his day, and a very prominent citizen of Montreal, died in that city on Saturday, April 15, 1865. He was the son of a Mr. Gale who, born in Hampshire, England, came to America in 1770 as assistant paymaster to the forces. He married there a Miss Wells, of Brattleboro, and soon after left the army, and took up his residence in the colony of New York. During the Revolution he stood firmly by the old flag under which he had served, and was for some time imprisoned as a loyalist. After the Revolution, he came to reside in Canada, upon an estate granted to his wife’s father by the crown, as indemnification for the losses brought upon him as a loyalist in the Revolution. He was subsequently secretary to Governor Prescott, whom he accompanied to England, and there assisted to defend him from the attacks made upon his administration. While there he wrote an essay on Public Credit, addressed and submitted to Pitt. The following is the inscription on his tombstone at Farnham, in Shefford county:
“Here rests Samuel Gale, Esq., formerly acting deputy paymaster general of H. Majesty’s forces in the Southern Provinces, now the U. S. of America; subsequently Secretary to H. E. the Governor-in-chief of H. M. dominions in N. A.; Author of Essays on Public Credit, and other works; born at Kimpton Hants, England, October 14, 1748; died at Farnham, June 27, 1826.”
Samuel Gale of this review was born at St. Augustine, East Florida, in 1783. He was educated at Quebec, while his father was secretary, and came to study law at Montreal under Chief Justice Sewell, in 1802, having Chief Justice Rolland and Mr. Papineau as fellow students. Mr. Gale was admitted to the bar in 1808, and ere long secured a large practice. In 1815 he was appointed a magistrate in the Indian territories, and accompanied Lord Selkirk when he went to the northwest. Later, when Lord Dalhousie was attacked for his Canadian administration, Mr. Gale went home as bearer of memorials from the English-speaking Lower Canadians in the townships and elsewhere, defending his lordship’s conduct. In 1829, he became chairman of the quarter sessions, and in 1834 was raised to the bench to replace Mr. Justice Uniacke, who preferred to resign the seat on the bench to which he had just been appointed rather than come back to Montreal during the cholera, then raging here. Judge Gale retired from the bench in 1849, forced into retirement by continued ill health and the gradual coming on of the infirmities of old age.