A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time by Rose
1866. In the Limestone City he found employment as a teacher, and for
2554 words | Chapter 62
about eighteen months he taught young Canada in Barriefield school. A
more lucrative situation offering as purser on board a steamer plying
between Kingston and Cape Vincent, Mr. Dunnet bade farewell to the
scholastic profession, and since then has devoted his attention to
mercantile pursuits. He began business in Toronto as “Briggs & Dunnet,”
in 1880, and six years afterwards Mr. Briggs retired, leaving Mr. Dunnet
sole partner. Since then the business has steadily increased, so much so
that in February, 1887, he took into partnership Malcolm McPherson, and
these two are now the members forming the firm of Dunnet, McPherson &
Co., hat and fur manufacturers, Front street, Toronto. Mr. Dunnet is in
politics a staunch Reformer, and in religion may be classed among the
Liberal-Christians. He was married in June, 1875, to Jessie McCammon,
daughter of Robert McCammon, of Kingston, Ontario.
* * * * *
=Doutre, Joseph=, Q.C., Montreal.—The late Mr. Doutre was born at
Beauharnois, in 1825, educated at Montreal College, and admitted to the
bar in 1847. The history of his life is that of the struggles of his
countrymen for civil and religious liberty, and is therefore of more
than personal interest. His ancestors were from the old province of
Roussillon, in the department of Pyrenées-Orientales. His grandfather
came from the immediate neighborhood of Perpignan, and had hardly
arrived in Canada when the country passed under the dominion of England.
In 1844, at the age of eighteen, his first work, a romance of five
hundred pages, entitled “Les Fiancés de 1812” (The Betrothed of 1812),
was published. He was an early adherent of the Institut Canadien, and
ever since the warm friend of that institution, which obtained its
charter under his presidency. As soon as _L’Avenir_ newspaper had taken
a fair start, in 1848, Mr. Doutre became one of its contributors. He was
a liberal contributor to the press, and most of the journals of the
province have at times published contributions from him. In 1848 he
published “Le Frère et la Sœur,” which was afterwards republished in
Paris. In 1851 he was the author of the laureate essay paid for by the
late Hon. Mr. de Boucherville, on “The Best Means of Spending Time in
the Interests of the Family and the Country.” In 1852 was published “Le
Sauvage du Canada.” To these should be added a series of biographical
essays on the most prominent political men of that date, which appeared
in _L’Avenir_. As one of the secretaries of the association formed in
1849 for the colonisation of the townships, he was instrumental in
starting the first settlements of Roxton and its vicinity. In 1853 Mr.
Doutre took the direction of the great struggle for the abolition of the
feudal tenure, and by means of meetings held throughout the country, and
diligence and care in the preparation of practical measures, the
agitation came to a crisis at the general election of 1854, when the
parliament, filled with moderate abolitionists, passed a law which did
away with this mediæval system of land tenure, to the mutual
satisfaction both of the seigneurs and tenants. Another campaign began
immediately after, for making the legislative council elective, instead
of being nominated by the Crown, and a law was passed to this effect in
1856, at which time Mr. Doutre was requested to stand as candidate for
the division of Salaberry, but he was defeated. In 1858 there commenced,
in a decided manner on the part of the Roman Catholic bishop of
Montreal, the long looming work of destruction against everything which
gave manifestation of life in the minds of educated Catholics. Mr.
Doutre stood foremost in the hand-to-hand battle which followed, and the
victory was a painful one, being achieved in the face of the
conscientious opposition of many friends. In 1861 he accepted, under
party pressure, the candidature of Laprairie, which resulted in another
defeat. This election, however, had the good effect of drawing attention
to the evil system of two days polling, as it was evident that his first
day’s majority had been upset by large sums of money being brought into
play upon the second day. This is the last time we find the subject of
our remarks in the arena of politics. He subsequently devoted himself
entirely to his profession. In 1863 he became Queen’s counsel. In 1866
he delivered a lecture before the Institut Canadien, on “The Charters of
Canada,” a remarkably concise and complete synopsis of the political
constitution of the country under the French government. In the same
year he was entrusted with the defence of Lamirande, the French banking
defaulter, whose extradition was sought for before our courts. After the
kidnapping of the man, when he was about to be released, he followed up
the demand for his restoration to the jurisdiction of our courts,
through the Foreign Office, in London, to a point when the British and
French governments were very seriously out of harmony, when Lamirande
solved the difficulty by surrendering all claims to further
negotiations. In 1869, the refusal of the Roman Catholic authorities to
bury Guibord, because he was a member of the Institut Canadien, brought
Mr. Doutre face to face with the necessity of choosing between a direct
contest with the authorities of his church or renouncing his right to
belong to a literary society, which implied the right of any personal
liberty of action. His choice in this matter entailed political
ostracism, and imposed upon him the most arduous task of following the
case in question from court to court, through all the degrees of
jurisdiction in Canada, in order to obtain the burial of Guibord, and of
continuing the same in England, where he went to argue before the Privy
Council, not only without fee, but at daily expense, finally winning the
case; and Guibord was buried in Côte des Neiges Cemetery by order of the
Queen’s mandate. The Institut Canadien handed over its valuable library
of eight thousand volumes to the Frazer Institute, and is now open
gratuitously to the public. Mr. Doutre died on the 3rd of February,
1886, and was buried, at his own request, in Mount Royal Cemetery
(Protestant), his remains being followed to the grave by the leading
citizens of all denominations and nationalities.
* * * * *
=Thorne, William Henry=, Hardware Merchant, St. John, New Brunswick, was
born on the 12th September, 1844, in St. John, N.B. His father, Edward
L. Thorne, came from Granville, Nova Scotia, settled in St. John, in
1814, and was for many years one of the leading business men of that
city. The members of the Thorne family who first settled in Granville,
N.S., were of the old loyalist stock who left New York on the close of
the revolutionary war and came over to the Maritime provinces. The
mother of the subject of our sketch was Susan Scovil, and her parents
settled in New Brunswick about the same time as the Thornes did in Nova
Scotia, and belonged to the same body of loyalists who refused to sever
their allegiance with the mother country. W. H. Thorne was educated at
the Grammar School in St. John, and afterwards adopted the mercantile
profession. He had several years’ experience as clerk with the firm of
J. & F. Burpee & Co.; and commenced the hardware and metal business on
his own account, in 1867. In 1873 he admitted R. O. Scovil as a partner.
This gentleman having died in 1884, Mr. Thorne continued the business,
taking into partnership, in 1885, two young men who had been in his
employ for several years—namely, Arthur T. Thorne and T. Carlton Lee,
and who are still members of the firm, and actively engaged in the
business, under the style of W. H. Thorne & Co. The business of this
firm has steadily grown until it is now amongst the largest in the
Maritime provinces. The stock kept by it is the largest and best
selected of its kind in the province, and their travellers may be daily
met with in Quebec, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, and Nova
Scotia. Mr. Thorne, the head of the firm, takes a deep interest in
everything that tends to advance the interests of his native city. He is
a vice-president of the Board of Trade, and is connected with several
other useful institutions. He is a progressive man, and may be classed
among the Liberals; and in religious matters he is an adherent of the
Episcopal church.
* * * * *
=Creelman, Hon. Samuel=, Round Bank, Upper Stewiacke, member of the
Legislative Council of Nova Scotia, was born at Upper Stewiacke,
Colchester county, Nova Scotia, 19th November, 1808. He is a son of
William and Hannah (Tupper) Creelman, his father being the grandson of
Samuel Creelman, who with his family emigrated from Newton Limavady,
county of Londonderry, Ireland, in 1760. After residing for a time in
Lunenburg and Halifax, he settled in Amherst, and at the time of the
taking the census in 1872, was possessed of the largest stock of cattle
owned in the township. Thence he removed to the locality now known as
Princeport, Truro. His eldest son, Samuel, was one of the original
grantees of the Upper Stewiacke grant, where he settled with his family
in 1784, and where he died in 1834, aged 84 years. He became the
possessor of sufficient land to furnish each of his six sons with a good
sized farm on the river. Hannah Tupper, the mother of the subject of
this sketch, was the great granddaughter of the late David Archibald,
the eldest of the four Archibald brothers who emigrated to Truro from
Londonderry, Ireland, by the way of New Hampshire, U.S. He was the first
representative for Truro in the House of Assembly of Nova Scotia, and
the first justice of the peace appointed in Truro. His name also stood
at the head of the first list of Presbyterian elders in the Truro
congregation. Her grandfathers, Colonel Robert Archibald and Eliakim
Tupper, and Samuel Tupper, her father, all held the office of justice of
the peace, and of elders in the Presbyterian Church. The Hon. Mr.
Creelman received a common school education in Stewiacke, and studied
for one winter under the late James Ross, D.D., Dalhousie College, at
West River. He resided with his father and labored on the farm until of
age, when, owing to delicacy of health, he spent a winter, as above
stated, and in the spring followed teaching for a time, when he then
engaged in trade, in which he was moderately successful. After his
marriage he engaged in agricultural pursuits, which he has since
followed. In 1842 he was appointed a justice of the peace, and a trustee
of Truro Academy. Shortly after entering political life, he was elected
in 1847 to represent the county of Colchester in the Legislative
Assembly of Nova Scotia and represented this constituency until 1851,
when he was chosen for South Colchester, and from that year until 1855
he represented it, when he was defeated at the polls. He was financial
secretary of the government from 1851 to 1856; and was appointed a
member of the Legislative Council in 1860. He was leader of the
opposition in the Assembly until the resignation of the Hill
administration in 1878, when he accepted the portfolio of commissioner
of public works and mines in the Thompson administration that followed.
This office he held until the fall of the administration, which took
place in 1882. At this time the Hon. Mr. Creelman was in London,
England, as a delegate on behalf of his government, whose object was the
carrying out an arrangement with a syndicate for consolidating the
railways of Nova Scotia. The new government recalled him and appointed
another delegate in his place, but shortly afterwards the scheme was
abandoned. He was reappointed to the Legislative Council, in 1867. Hon.
Mr. Creelman has been very active in promoting all measures for the
advancement of education and temperance. He introduced the bill for the
establishment of a Provincial Normal School; and was the chairman of the
commission appointed by the government for the erection of the first
Normal School building in Truro, in 1854. When financial secretary he
supported the bill for the prohibition of the sale of intoxicating
liquors, which was carried through the House of Assembly, but defeated
in the Legislative Council. Here we may say that the Hon. Mr. Creelman
is the oldest member of the Nova Scotia legislature, and that the Hon.
Judge Henry is the only one now living (besides himself) who held a seat
in it when he first entered it. He is a large shareholder in the
Hopewell Woollen Mills Company, and was formerly the principal
shareholder in the Mulgrave Woollen Company, Upper Stewiacke. In 1830 he
joined a Temperance society, and has been a total abstainer ever since,
and an earnest and efficient worker in the cause. In 1849 he became a
Son of Temperance, and in 1868 was elected grand worthy patriarch of the
Grand Division of Nova Scotia. He has been president of the Nova Scotia
Alliance, and is a vice-president at present and a member of the
National Division of the Sons of Temperance of North America, having
been initiated in that body in 1871. In 1878 he occupied the position of
president of the Sunday-school Convention for the Maritime Provinces,
held at Truro. He is a life member of the Nova Scotia Bible Society, and
a member of the Young Men’s Christian Association, Halifax. He has also
been a member of the Historical Society of Halifax for some years past.
In 1882 he visited London, Liverpool, and several cities in England;
Edinburgh and Glasgow, in Scotland; Paris, in France; and Belfast,
Newton Limavady and Derry, in Ireland. He and his father were both
elected elders in the Presbyterian church in 1851. On several occasions
Mr. Creelman has been sent as a delegate to the General Assembly of that
church, and attended its meetings at Montreal, Ottawa, and Halifax; and
he has also attended meetings of the Synod of the Maritime provinces in
connection with the same religious body. He has been a Sabbath school
teacher for over fifty years. Previous to confederation Hon. Mr.
Creelman worked in union with the Liberal party, having for his
associates Hon. Messrs. Howe, the Youngs, Archibald, Uniacke, etc., but
since then he has become a Liberal-Conservative. Owing to the
infirmities of age, especially defective hearing, he is now unable to
take the very active part in the legislature and in other public bodies
which he previously did. Round Bank, the farm on which he now resides,
is within a mile of his birth place. When in government offices his
residence was in Halifax. On the 11th February, 1834, he married
Elizabeth Elliot Ellis, who still survives. She is the eldest daughter
of the late John Ellis, whose father emigrated from the North of Ireland
nearly 100 years ago. Her mother was the daughter of the late James
Dechman, of Halifax, who came from Scotland many years ago.
* * * * *
=Hind, Professor Henry Youle=, M.A., Windsor, Nova Scotia, was born in
Nottingham, England, on the 1st of June, 1823, and came to Canada in
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