A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time by Rose
1846. His father, John McConnell, served under Mr. Howard, of High Park,
2654 words | Chapter 76
in the defence of Little York (Toronto), during the time of the William
Lyon McKenzie rebellion. He was an adherent of the Methodist church, and
acted in the capacity of local preacher for about forty years; he was
also a justice of the peace, and a man greatly respected in his day. His
mother, Elizabeth McGaw, was a daughter of the late Andrew McGaw, of
Port Hope. Both families first settled in Scarboro’ about 1836. Dr.
McConnell’s father, after a residence of about ten years there, bought
the farm, lot twenty-three, second concession, of Markham, and removed
there in 1849. The subject of our sketch was the fourth son of the above
union, born in the old homestead in Scarboro’, and accompanied his
parents to their new home. He received his primary education in the
public schools of Markham, where he remained until 1859. Then he began
to entertain ideas of supporting himself, and hired out to a farmer at
$10 a month, for the summer season. This engagement completed, he
returned home, and his father sent him to the Grammar School, Richmond
Hill, then under the charge of the late Rev. John Boyd, B.A. Soon after
he entered this school, Mr. Boyd resigned, and was succeeded by L. H.
Evans, B.A., of Trinity College, under whose able tuition young
McConnell remained for three years. Early in 1863 he underwent an
examination, and succeeded in gaining a second-class A. certificate,
which gave him great satisfaction. He then applied for a situation as
teacher in a number of school sections, but owing to his youth, he did
not succeed until December of that year, when he obtained a school in
York township, with a salary of £67 10s. per annum, when he began his
real battle with the world. During the following year he undertook the
somewhat difficult task of preparing himself for a matriculation
examination in the Toronto University, and also to prepare for a
first-class certificate as a teacher. He succeeded in both, and
moreover, secured an advance of £10 to his salary for the next year,
which was of great use to him. During 1864 he commenced the study of
medicine. In 1866 he left York township and removed to Scarboro’, where
he secured a school at £90 a year. From here he was in the habit of
driving thirteen miles four days a week to prosecute his medical studies
in Toronto, and the following spring he matriculated in medicine. He
continued teaching until October, when he relinquished his school and
became a student in the Toronto School of Medicine. In the spring of
1867 he passed his primary examination at the University of Toronto, and
was admitted as an undergraduate in the Toronto Hospital, and also
placed in charge of the Burnside Lying-in Hospital, Sheppard street.
Notwithstanding these somewhat onerous duties, he attached himself to
the military school in connection with the 13th Hussars, a British
regiment of cavalry then stationed at the New Fort, Toronto, under the
command of the late Colonel Jennings, one of the heroes of the Light
Brigade, and from whom he received many evidences of respect and
kindness. He was attached as an officer of the Oak Ridge troop of
cavalry, to which he had belonged from 1860, when, on the occasion of
the visit of the Prince of Wales, it was stationed in Toronto, and was
with this troop, under arms, at Richmond Hill (headquarters) during the
Fenian troubles, in 1866. Before leaving the Military School, in the
autumn of 1868, he received from Colonel Jennings a first-class
certificate, which he is proud still to possess. He then returned to his
lectures in the university—still retaining his position in the
hospital—and worked hard both in and out of school, so that when the
examination came on in the spring, he passed a most critical
examination, and succeeded in securing the degree of M.B. He received
his diploma on the 11th June, 1869, and commenced to practise his
profession at Thornhill, township of Vaughan, York county, where he
practised for fifteen years, when he removed to Brockton, in 1882, then
a suburb of, and now part of, the city of Toronto. Shortly after taking
up his residence in Brockton, he was elected reeve of the village by
acclamation; and in 1884, when it was annexed to Toronto as St. Mark’s
ward, the doctor represented it in the city council. He is coroner for
the county of York, and has held the position of president of the West
York Reform Association, and also of the Reform Association of Vaughan.
In June, 1886, Dr. McConnell was gazetted second lieutenant of the 12th
Battalion York Rangers, and in June, 1887, was attached to “C.” Royal
School of Infantry, New Fort Barracks, Toronto, under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Otter, and was awarded a second-class certificate,
and received his commission as first lieutenant of the York Rangers. As
a professional man, he is endowed with a kindly disposition, and is
never slow to help any poor person-visiting his office for medical
advice or medicine. Dr. McConnell has been for four years attendant
physician to the Protestant Orphans’ Home, of Toronto, where two hundred
orphan children are supported by the charitable people of the city and
neighborhood, and his watchful care has not only been gratuitous, but
productive of the most gratifying results. Besides practising his
profession, he has interested himself in real estate, and is now one of
the largest property owners in the ward of St. Mark. His career points a
moral which our young men would do well to study, showing as it does
that perseverance and attention to duty is a greater requisite to
success in life than to be born to affluence. He was married previous to
his beginning his practice, to Miss Powell, of York township, and during
their residence at Thornhill, eight children were born to them, five
daughters and three sons, and of these, three daughters and one son
survive.
* * * * *
=Roberts, Charles George Douglas=, M.A., Professor of Modern Literature,
King’s College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, was born at Douglas, near
Fredericton, New Brunswick, on the 10th of January, 1860. His father,
the Rev. G. Goodridge Roberts, M.A., rector of Fredericton, was the
eldest son of the late George Roberts, Ph.D., a gentleman of English
descent, formerly headmaster of Fredericton Collegiate School, and
professor of classics in the University of New Brunswick. Our poet comes
of a line of ancestors more or less conspicuous as scholars, upon both
maternal and paternal sides. His mother, Emma Wetmore Bliss Roberts,
daughter of the late Judge Bliss, also of Fredericton, comes of an old
loyalist family, of which Emerson’s mother was a member. Mr. Roberts,
the subject of this sketch, was educated at Fredericton Collegiate
School, where he took the Douglas medal for classics. In 1877, while at
the University of New Brunswick, he took a classical scholarship, with
honors in Greek and Latin; in 1878, the alumni gold medal for an essay
in Latin; and in 1879 graduating with honors in metaphysics and ethics.
In this year he was appointed head-master of Chatham, New Brunswick,
Grammar School. In 1880 his first volume of verse, entitled “Orion and
other Poems,” was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia; and
in 1881 he took his degree of M.A., and according to the ordinary
acceptation of the term, “finished his education,” though a man’s
education may never truly be said to be finished while he is an
inhabitant of this mortal sphere, and retains his faculties. Yet the
foregoing statements prove that Mr. Roberts had acquired much knowledge
at a very early age, and at a very early age was inspired by the soul of
song. No one can doubt this who has read the following extract, which we
take from his lines entitled “To the Spirit of Song”:
Surely I have seen the majesty and wonder,
Beauty, might, and splendor, of the soul of song;
Surely I have felt the spell that lifts asunder
Soul from body, when lips faint and thought is strong.
These lines are to be found on the first page of his volume, entitled
“Orion, and other Poems,” and unquestionably show genius in the boy
under twenty years of age, for it would have been impossible for any one
not possessed of the soul of song to have conceived them. Had the first,
third, fourth, eleventh, and thirteenth lines been equal to those we
have quoted, the concluding line—
Lowly I wait the song upon my lips conferred
—would have made the picture of the dark-eyed, dark-haired aspirant for
immortality, kneeling before the white-robed angel, a simply perfect
creation. The poem “Orion” is an outcome of his early love for classical
literature, and when we consider that it was written by a boy standing
on the threshold of life, it is wonderful; and shows distinctly what he
may attain in coming years, when at the zenith of his power. This poem
contains many lines of unsurpassed beauty. We quote the following
couplet, which is taken from that part of the poem which describes Orion
lying upon the seashore in his utter wretchedness, when the drug
administered by the king is beginning to affect him. The scene is
described as, at the setting of the sun—
The deep-eyed Night drew down to comfort him,
And lifted her great lids, and mourned for him.
And again, later in the night, a slave comes with the king bearing a cup
containing the juice with which he puts out Orion’s eyes, and a servitor
bearing a torch, before whose light—
All the darkness shuddered and fled back.
And how beautiful are the lines sung by the weeping sea-nymphs—
We all are made heavy of heart, we weep with thee, sore with thy
sorrow;
The sea to its utmost part, the night from the dusk to the morrow.
And again, when he regains his sight—
All the morning’s majesty
And mystery of loveliness lay bare
Before him; all the limitless blue sea
Brightening with laughter many a league around.
Wind wrinkled, etc.
But it may be that the genius of Mr. Roberts is nowhere so apparent as
in a short poem of his that we have seen somewhere, entitled, “Off
Pelorus,” the first stanza of which is an exquisite piece of
word-painting, combined with the very soul of song. We quote from
memory—
Crimson swims the sun-set over far Pelorus,
Burning crimson tops its frowning crest of pine;
Purple sleeps the shore, and floats the wave before us,
Eachwhere from the oar-stroke eddying warm like wine.
It is impossible to separate true poetry from its sister, painting, and
here the two walk hand in hand. The rich coloring of the painter, the
subtle thought and music of the poet, and all developed strongly, so as
to come within the immediate grasp of ordinary intelligence. We have not
seen Mr. Roberts’ prose writing, but we are informed that he has written
much that is masterly in thought and style; can do good battle in a
political discussion, and has peculiar and abundant gifts in the field
of criticism. In 1882 he was appointed head-master of York Street
School, Fredericton. In 1883 he accepted the position of editor of _The
Week_, a Toronto weekly, from which he, finding his tastes did not
harmonize with the director’s, retired in four months, when he returned
to New Brunswick, and was there engaged with several literary
undertakings, till his call, in 1885, to the University of King’s
College, Windsor, Nova Scotia, as professor of English and French
literature and political economy. In 1887 he published his most
important work, “In Divers Tones” (Montreal: Dawson Bros.; Boston: D.
Lothrop & Co.), which has been very favorably received. Professor
Roberts is a contributor to most of the notable publications printed in
the English language; among these may be mentioned “Longman’s,” “The
Century,” “Wide Awake,” and “Outing.” Mr. Roberts is a member of the
Church of England, and was married December 29th, 1880, to Mary Isabel
Fenety, daughter of George E. Fenety, Queen’s printer, of Fredericton,
New Brunswick. By this marriage he has three children.
* * * * *
=Chicoyne, Jerome Adolphe=, Advocate, Sherbrooke, was born on the 22nd
August, 1844, at St. Pie, county of Bagot, province of Quebec. His
paternal ancestors came over from France at the time Mr. de Maisonneuve
was recruiting settlers for the colony of Ville-Marie. His name was
Pierre Chicoyne, and his place in France was and is still called
Channay, in the old Province of Anjou. He became proprietor of the fief
Bellevue, in the parish of Verchères, which fief still belongs to his
descendants. Members of the family continue to reside in the same place
and vicinity in France, and intercourse is regularly kept up between
them from both sides of the ocean. A new settlement, started in the
township of Woburn, at the head of Lake Megantic, in the county of
Beauce (where the subject of our sketch felled the first tree on the 8th
December, 1880), is named Channay, as a reminiscence of the place
wherefrom his ancestor came. Mr. Chicoyne was educated at the Seminary
of St. Hyacinthe, and followed the usual course—eight years. He was
admitted to the bar of Lower Canada on the 17th September, 1868, at
Montreal; and after practising at St. Hyacinthe until 1872, was
compelled to quit it in consequence of ill-health. He then became
attached to the department of agriculture of the province of Quebec, as
colonization agent, and has ever since been connected with the
colonization movement in the Eastern Townships. In 1875 he left St.
Hyacinthe with his family, and settled at La Patrie, one of the new
settlements organized by him in his capacity of government agent. In
1880, he started a colonization scheme (under the patronage of both the
Provincial and Federal governments) in France, which resulted in the
influx of considerable French capital and immigrants to these townships.
Some of the results may now be seen in the great progress achieved by
the village of Megantic, in the county of Compton, and in the above
mentioned settlement of Channay. In January, 1886, he took the direction
of _Le Pionnier_, the oldest French paper in the Eastern Townships,
which paper has largely contributed to, and still helps, the settlement
of that comparatively new section of the country. He took part for the
first time in politics during the elections of 1867, in the Conservative
interest, and is still, and has ever been a most devoted and faithful
worker in the Conservative ranks. Mr. Chicoyne has made four trips to
Europe, and has visited England, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy,
and while in these countries studied the political economy and social
questions of the age. In religion he is a member of the Roman Catholic
church. On the 7th January, 1868, he was married at St. Hyacinthe, to
Dame Caroline Perreault.
* * * * *
=Elliott, Edward=, Barrister, Perth, Ontario, was born in the township
of Elmsley, county of Lanark, Ontario, on the 29th June, 1884. He is of
Irish descent, his father, John Elliot, and mother, Rebecca Taylor, both
having been born in Ireland. The family came to Canada in 1818, and
shortly afterwards settled in Lanark. The subject of this sketch
received his education at the Grammar School of Perth. In 1863 he began
the study of the law with the late William Oscar Buell, barrister, in
Perth. Mr. Elliott was admitted as a solicitor in Michaelmas term 1868,
and called to the bar in Hilary term 1869. Though devoted to his
profession, he has yet found time to serve his fellow-citizens in
various capacities. For ten years he has been a member of the town
council, during two of which he served as mayor, namely, in 1879 and
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