ALBERT E. DE LORIMIER
HON. JOHN YOUNG.
For twenty-five years Hon. John Young was one of the harbor commissioners of Montreal and no one did more for the development and protection of the shipping industry at this point. Indeed his whole life was largely devoted to the public service and there are few men who have the insight and the prescience to recognize possibilities and opportunities for the general good as he did and the perseverance and determination to use such opportunities for the benefit of the many. His country will ever remember him with gratitude and his friends with deep affection, for aside from his public career there were in him traits of character that endeared him closely to those with whom he came in contact through other relations. He bound his friends to him with hoops of steel when their adoption had been tried, and at all times he held friendship as something sacred and inviolable.
Born in Ayr, Scotland, March 11, 1811, Hon. John Young attended the parish school, and his aptitude in his studies was manifest in the fact that when but fourteen years of age he obtained the appointment of master of the parish school at Coylton, near Ayr, where he taught for eighteen months. He early developed the habits of industry and cheerful perseverance which characterized his after life and in 1826, when a youth of fifteen, he completed his arrangements to become a resident of Canada, attracted by favorable reports concerning the great opportunities of the new world. His initial business experience here came to him as a clerk in the employ of John Torrance and the development of his powers and capacity is shown in the fact that in 1835, when but twenty-four years of age, he became a partner of David Torrance in the firm of Torrance & Young, which for five years continued in business at Quebec.
From early manhood he was a student of the signs of the times and business never claimed his undivided attention. He carefully and systematically managed his interests, but he also found time to perform the duties of citizenship wisely and well and he became a leader of public thought and action. At an early day he urged upon Lord Gosford the forming of volunteer corps but the governor general felt there was little reason to comply with this request. It was not long, however, before events proved the soundness of his advice and when the rebellion came Mr. Young volunteered for service in a regiment of light infantry which was raised in twenty-four hours and in which he became a captain.
When his aid was no longer needed Mr. Young returned to Montreal and became a partner of Harrison Stephens in the firm of Stephens, Young & Company which occupied a prominent position in business circles of Montreal for many years. His personal interests took him largely over the west and in his travels and his study of business conditions he saw how valuable was the St. Lawrence system as a factor in the commercial history of the American continent, furnishing the course of the natural routes to the seaboard. It seemed that he never lost sight of any point bearing upon the subject which came so close to his heart—the development of the shipping industries of Montreal—and eventually he became recognized as the greatest canal authority in America.