The Canadian Portrait Gallery - Volume 3 (of 4)

In the proceedings which resulted in Confederation Mr. McGee took a conspicuous and an honourable part. The union of the British North American Provinces, as we have seen, had been advocated by him from the time of his first arrival in the country. Independently of his speeches in the House, which were among the most brilliant efforts evoked by the occasion, he did good service by his writings in the public press, and by lectures and addresses delivered by him in various parts of Canada and the Maritime Provinces. In order that he might be relieved from pecuniary cares by which he was sometimes beset, his friends throughout the country organized a fund on his behalf, and purchased and presented him with a comfortable, well-appointed homestead in Montmorenci Terrace, St. Catherine Street, Montreal, wherein he and his family found a resting-place during the remaining years of his life. He was thus enabled to address himself to his cherished projects with comparative freedom from anxiety.

In 1865 he repaired to England as a Member of the Executive Council to confer with the Imperial Government upon the great question of Confederation. During his absence he, after an interval of seventeen years, once more set foot on his native land, and paid a visit to Wexford, the home of his boyhood, where he was the guest of his father. During his sojourn at Wexford on this occasion he delivered an eloquent speech on the condition of the Irish race in America. He publicly deplored the part he had played in the troubles of 1848, and enlarged upon the demoralized condition of his countrymen in the United States as compared with those resident in Canada. He proclaimed his conviction that the time for fruitless attempts at insurrection was past, and that he for his part should regard traitors to Great Britain as the enemies of human progress. This deliverance gave grievous offence to the Irish citizens of the United States, by many of whom D'Arcy McGee was thenceforward denounced as a renegade to his principles. This sentiment was strengthened by McGee's righteous denunciations of the Fenian horde who menaced our shores in the summer of 1866, and who shed the blood of some of our promising young men. At the general election of 1867 these utterances were called into requisition as an election cry. Mr. McGee had not accepted a portfolio in the first Government under Confederation, which had just been formed, but had waived his claim to office in favour of another Irish Catholic, Mr. Kenny, of Nova Scotia. McGee, however, though he was thus complaisant, had no intention of retiring immediately from public life, and once more offered himself to his constituents in Montreal West. That constituency was the abode of the local "Head Centre" of the Fenian Brotherhood, and the Fenian influence there was considerable. Mr. McGee's utterances had made him the object of the inveterate hatred of that body, and it was determined that he should be ousted from the seat which he had held ever since his entry into political life in Canada. Mr. Devlin, an Irish Catholic, and a prominent member of the Montreal Bar, was brought out as an opposition candidate, and the most shameless devices were resorted to to secure that gentleman's return. "Every vile epithet calculated to rouse ignorant Irish Catholics," — says the author of "The Irishman in Canada," — "was hurled at McGee. He had, as his manner was, gone right round from denying the existence of Fenianism in Montreal, to exaggerating the extent of it, and denouncing it, not in undeserved terms, but in terms which seemed violent from a man of his past history. He won his election, but by a majority which convinced him that his power had greatly waned. He had, however, the consolation that if he had lost popularity, he had lost it in enlightening his countrymen." He had felt it to be his duty to place Fenianism in its proper light before his fellow-countrymen in Canada. He knew that the order was powerless for good, and that it would entail pecuniary loss, if not absolute ruin, upon many well-meaning but ignorant and misguided persons. So far as the Fenian scheme contemplated an invasion of Canada, he regarded it with all the scorn and abhorrence of a loyal subject. For this he was denounced by the Fenians, and held up to execration as one who had sold himself to the spoiler.

Before the opening of the first session of the Dominion Parliament he was attacked by a long and severe illness, which brought him to death's door, and from which he only recovered in time to attend at the opening of the session. It was noticed that there was a decided change, not merely in his physical appearance, but in the workings of his mind. He had formerly been addicted to frequent indulgence in strong drink. He had now become rigidly abstemious and regular in all his habits. He seemed to be pervaded by a seriousness which almost amounted to melancholy. His friends believed these characteristics to be something deeper than the temporary humours of convalescence. His serious indisposition had made him reflect, and his situation was one which afforded ample food for reflection. Ever since the delivery of the Wexford speech he had been in receipt of frequent anonymous letters in which he was anathematized as a traitor, and warned to prepare for death. Some of these came from Ireland. The envelopes of a few of them afforded evidence of their having been posted in Montreal; but by far the greater number came from the United States. He affected to console himself with the proverb that "threatened men live long," but he could not bring himself to regard these truly fiendish communications with indifference. He knew the desperate character of the class of Irishmen from whom they emanated, and he shuddered as he reflected that he had at one time been the idol and fellow-worker of such as they. The shadow of his impending doom was upon him. During the interval between rising from his bed of sickness and the opening of the session in November he had determined to retire from public life in the course of the following year, and to devote the rest of his days to literary pursuits. His determination was not destined to be carried out. He took a part in the debates while the session was in progress, and some of the most statesmanlike utterances that ever passed his lips were delivered during this, the last winter he was ever to see. On the evening of the 6th of April he occupied his usual place in the House, and made a brilliant and effective speech on the subject of the lately-formed Union. A little after two o'clock on the following morning he left the House in company with two of his political friends, and proceeded in the direction of the place where he lodged — the Toronto House, on Sparks Street, kept by a Mrs. Trotter. When the three had arrived within a hundred yards of Mr. McGee's destination they separated, each betaking himself to his own lodging-house. Mr. McGee, having reached his door and inserted his latch-key, was just about entering, when the sound of a pistol-shot was heard by his landlady, who was awaiting his arrival. She hurried to the door, and opened it, to find Mr. McGee's body lying prone across the sidewalk. The alarm was given, and a crowd soon collected on the spot. The body was raised, but the assassin's bullet had done its work. The ball had entered the back of the head and passed through the mouth, shattering the front teeth, and producing what must have been instant and painless death.

The miscreant at whose hands D'Arcy McGee met his fate was a Fenian named Patrick James Whalen. He was subsequently arrested, tried, found guilty, and hanged at Ottawa.

Had Mr. McGee lived another week he would have completed his forty-third year; so that he was still a young man, and had his life been spared there is good reason to believe that he would have made an abiding mark in literature. During his lifetime he published many volumes, but they were for the most part written under disadvantageous circumstances, and merely afford indications of what he might have achieved in literature. His poems have been collected in various editions; but the work by which he is best known is his "Popular History of Ireland," originally published in two volumes at New York in 1863, and since reprinted in various forms.

DAVID ALLISON, M.A., LL.D.,

SUPERINTENDENT OF EDUCATION FOR THE PROVINCE OF NOVA SCOTIA

Doctor Allison was born at Newport, Hants County, Nova Scotia, on the 3rd of July, 1836. By both lines of descent he belongs to that thrifty Scoto-Irish stock to which the central counties of Nova Scotia are largely indebted for their progress. On the paternal side he belongs to a family which has displayed much aptitude for public affairs, his grandfather and father both having occupied seats in the Provincial Legislature. His brother, Mr. W. Henry Allison, after occupying a seat in the same Body for several terms, at present represents the county of Hants in the House of Commons.

His preliminary education was received at the Provincial Academy at Halifax — since re-organized and developed into Dalhousie College — and at the Wesleyan Academy, Sackville, N.B. His school-boy days at Halifax were contemporaneous with a period of great political excitement, and a race of orators rarely surpassed in any colonial legislature — Howe, Johnston, Young, Uniacke — enlivened the Assembly room of the Province with their eloquence. Frequent attendance on the discussions waged by these masters of debate gave to the young student's mind a strong and permanent leaning towards political and constitutional studies. At Sackville, where he studied four consecutive years, the basis of a broad and liberal training was firmly laid. Twenty-five years ago, institutions of learning really doing educational work of a high order were not so numerous in the Maritime Provinces as they now are, and the Academy at Sackville, distinguished for its high standard and energetic methods, attracted patronage, not only from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but from Newfoundland and "the vexed Bermoothes." During his connection with this school, he was thus brought into contact with many young men who have since won distinction in Provincial life. His academic career ended, he was determined (we suppose) by denominational proclivities to seek University training and honours at the Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., U.S., where his career was in a high degree successful and brilliant. For some years after graduation, in 1859, he filled the post of classical instructor at Sackville, first in the Academy, and from 1862 to 1869 in the Mount Allison College, an institution organized in that year under charter obtained from the Legislature of New Brunswick. The resignation of the Presidency of the College by the Rev. Dr. Pickard, in 1869, gave its Board of Governors an opportunity of showing their appreciation of his scholarship and character. He was unanimously elected President, and thenceforward for nine years devoted himself with assiduity and success to the duties of that position.

The work of a classical teacher, especially in a country college, does not attract much public attention, and however effectively performed cannot furnish much material for biographical remark. It is enough to say that Professor Allison taught the classics with great efficiency, illuminating the otherwise dull page with the illustrative light of history, philosophy and literature. On his accession to the Presidency of the College he exchanged the Chair of Classics for that of Mental Science, and his lectures on that subject as delivered to successive classes would, if published, secure for their author no mean reputation as an acute and independent thinker. During the nine years of his Presidency at Sackville he bore a heavy load of responsibility. The work of endowing the College and generally improving its financial condition was no light one. The intense intercollegiate competition of the Lower Provinces rendered it necessary to infuse new vigour into the teaching staff. The unsettled condition of the "higher education" question, and the somewhat feverish state of the public mind regarding it, obliged one occupying his position to be on the alert, ready with pen or voice to attack or defend as circumstances might require. It is sufficient to affirm, that when in 1878 he resigned his office for a new sphere of responsibility, no College in the Maritime Provinces had for its years a better record than his, and no college officer a wider or more enviable reputation for varied scholarship and progressive tendencies of mind.

On a vacancy arising in the office of Superintendent of Education for the Province of Nova Scotia in 1877, all eyes were turned to him. Enjoying to a flattering extent the confidence of the friends of the Sackville Institution, he naturally hesitated, but finally yielded when appeals from the leaders of public opinion on all sides were joined to the independent attractions of the offered post. The two years during which he has administered the educational affairs of the Province show clearly that he possesses a delicate appreciation of the elements of the problem which he is required to solve. Reforms should, if possible, follow one another in logical sequence. If the new Superintendent is moving too slowly for some and too fast for others, he is probably moving as all his really sincere and well-informed critics would wish him to do, were their opportunities for taking in the whole situation as good as his. Since his appointment he has aroused throughout the Province a fresh interest in the cause of popular instruction, not only by his masterly reports, but by the vigorous use of his abundant gift of public speaking.

On assuming office as Superintendent, Dr. Allison found the important sphere of intermediate education out of proper relation to the higher and lower departments of instruction. A system of self-terminated common schools of an elementary type, and a system of colleges mainly without a trustworthy source of supply, he refused to believe adapted to the wants of his Province and the genius of the age. His efforts to secure a better distribution of educational appliances, and better inter-working of educational forces, have already, we believe, been crowned with some success. Though not without aptitudes for other departments of public service, he has hitherto refused to listen to all propositions involving departure from the strict path of educational effort and usefulness.

Dr. Allison is a man of broad political sympathies. Residing in the United States during those years of intense feeling which immediately preceded the great Civil War, and having abundant opportunity of hearing those passion-stirring appeals by which fiery orators accelerated the awful crisis, his early prepossessions towards political and historical studies were greatly strengthened. The reading and thought spent in this direction have no doubt resulted in the formation of strong, well-developed opinions. If, as some suspect, these opinions are somewhat radical, they are held in judicious equilibrium by the practical conservatism of his conduct. The liberality of his religious sentiments admirably qualify him for a position in relation to which the distinction of creeds is ignored. He is a member of the Methodist Church of Canada, and as a lay representative has taken a prominent part in the two General Conferences of that influential denomination, and has been appointed a delegate to the General Congress of Methodism to be held in London in 1881. This is the sphere of private opinion and action, but even in that he has always thrown his influence in favour of fraternity and peace. As regards public relations, the universal confidence in his impartiality is a prime element of his strength.

He received the degree of B.A. in 1859, and of M.A. in 1862, in due course from the Wesleyan University, and in 1873 the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the University of Victoria College, Cobourg, Ont. In 1876 he was appointed by the Executive Government of Nova Scotia a Fellow of the Senate of the University of Halifax. In the hope of unifying and improving the higher education of the Maritime Provinces Dr. Allison had given the scheme for establishing such a University, modelled on that of London, an earnest, and at a critical juncture, most valuable support, and still vigorously sustains the experiment of an Examining University as under the circumstances of the case contributing to the satisfactory solution of a difficult problem. That the proposed scheme was open to some of the objections vigorously urged against it by the Rev. Mr. (now Principal) Grant and others he did not attempt to deny. But who could propose any measure directed towards the improvement of advanced education in Nova Scotia which was not open to objection? The existing Colleges, five or six in number, were feeble and ill-equipped, but they had become strongly entrenched in the affections of religious denominations, whose unwillingness to surrender real or seeming advantages in connection with these institutions was proportioned to the sacrifices by which these advantages had been secured. Assuming this unwillingness of the Colleges to surrender their chartered privileges, as the first and indeed fundamental condition of the establishment of a genuine Provincial University to be inexpugnable, the projectors of the University of Halifax sought to give a steady and appreciable value to Collegiate degrees conferred in the Province, to reduce to something like order the chaos of divergent systems, and to send down into the strata of primary and intermediate education an uplifting influence from above. Should even these more limited objects be unattained through the failure of the Colleges to practically aid a measure designed at least in part for their benefit, it may in the end appear that the indifference of these institutions was not dictated by the highest wisdom even as regards their own interests.

THE HON. THOMAS GALT

Judge Galt is the second son of the late John Galt, who was for some time the Canadian Commissioner of the Canada Company, and who was the author of numerous dramas and works of fiction which once enjoyed great popularity. Some account of the life of the late Mr. Galt has been given in the sketch of the life of his youngest son, the Hon. Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt, which appeared in the second volume of this series.

The subject of this sketch was born in Portland Street, Oxford Street, London, England, where his father at that time resided, on the 12th of August, 1815. His early life was passed alternately in England and in Scotland. He received his education at various public and private schools. He was for about two years a pupil at a private establishment at Musselburgh, a small seaport town in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. The late Hon. George Brown was also a pupil at this establishment. Mr. Galt was removed from Musselburgh in 1826, and placed under the tuition of Dr. Valpy, a classical scholar of high reputation. In 1828 he came out to Canada, and was for two years a pupil in the establishment of Mr. Braithwaite, at Chambly, where he had for fellow-pupils, the present Bishop of Niagara and the late Thomas C. Street. In 1830 he returned to Great Britain, where he spent three years, when, having nearly completed his eighteenth year he emigrated to Upper Canada, and settled in what was then Little York. This was in the autumn of 1833, and in the month of March following, Little York became the city of Toronto, with William Lyon Mackenzie as its first mayor. Mr. Galt has ever since resided in Toronto, and has thus had his home in our Provincial capital for more than forty-seven years.

Upon his arrival at Little York he entered the service of the Canada Company, of which his father had been one of the original promoters, and most active spirits. He remained in that service about six years, when, having resolved upon studying law, he entered the office of Mr. — afterwards the Hon. Chief Justice — Draper, where he remained until his studies had been completed. During a part of this period he occupied the position of chief clerk in the office of his principal, who was then Attorney-General for Upper Canada. In this capacity it fell to his duty to prepare the indictments, which required not merely an accurate knowledge of the criminal law, but a close familiarity with the highly technical system of criminal pleading which prevailed in those days. In Easter Term, 1845, he was called to the Bar of Upper Canada, and immediately afterwards settled down to the practice of his profession. He was possessed of excellent abilities, a fine presence, and a remarkably prepossessing manner, which qualifications combined to place him in a foremost position before he had been long engaged in practice. He became solicitor for numerous corporations and public companies, and had always a very large business.

In October, 1847, when he had been at the Bar somewhat more than two years, he married Miss Frances Louisa Perkins, youngest daughter of the late Mr. James W. Perkins, who had formerly held a position in the Royal Navy. By this lady he has a family of nine children. In 1855 he became a Bencher of the Law Society of Upper Canada, and in 1858 he was appointed a Queen's Counsel, simultaneously with the Hon. Stephen Richards. He from time to time formed various partnerships, one of which was with the late Hon. John Ross. Another was subsequently formed with the late Hon. John Crawford, who some years later became Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario.

While at the Bar, in addition to a very extensive and profitable civil practice, he took a front rank as a criminal lawyer, for which distinction his past experience in the office of Attorney-General Draper had eminently fitted him. He was engaged in the celebrated case of Regina vs. Brogden, which many readers of these pages will not fail to remember. The prisoner was a well-known lawyer of Port Hope, who was tried at Cobourg for shooting one Anderson, the seducer of his wife. A year or two later he represented the Crown in another historical criminal case which was tried at Cobourg, wherein the prisoner, Dr. King, was convicted of poisoning his wife. In 1863 he appeared for the Crown at Toronto against that well-remembered malefactor William Greenwood. There were three indictments against the prisoner, two for murder and one for arson. On the first indictment for murder the prisoner was acquitted. On that for arson, which was prosecuted by Mr. Galt, he was convicted. With the other indictment for murder Mr. Galt was not concerned. The prisoner, however, was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged, but committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.

Mr. Galt was appointed to his present position, that of a Puisné Judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Ontario, on the death of the late Judge John Wilson, in 1869. His sixty-five years seem to sit very lightly upon him, and he is still distinguished by a fine, dignified, and most kindly presence. In addition to the attainments properly belonging to him as an eminent lawyer, he is known as a master of style, and his judgments are marked not less by their depth of learning than by the stateliness of the diction in which they are written.

The most important criminal case over which he has been called upon to preside since his accession to the Bench was that against Mrs. George Campbell, who was tried at the assizes held at London, in the autumn of 1872, for murdering her husband under most revolting circumstances. She was convicted, and suffered the extreme penalty of the law.