A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time by Rose
1789. He was of Norman and Saxon descent, claiming kindred with Michael
1650 words | Chapter 96
De Montaigne, the celebrated French essayist. At the age of seven years
he commenced his Latin grammar, while residing with his father, at
Woodfield, near Quebec. At sixteen he was sent to Little Easton, county
of Essex, England, where he prepared to enter Trinity College,
Cambridge. There he acquitted himself in such a manner as induced Dr.
Monk, professor of Greek, one of his examiners, to recommend him as
principal of a college in Nova Scotia, for which position he considered
Mr. Mountain peculiarly fitted. On leaving Cambridge he returned to
Quebec, and acted as secretary for his father while studying for the
ministry. On the 2nd of August, 1812, he was ordained a deacon, and was
appointed to assist the bishop’s chaplain, Rev. Salter Mountain. In 1814
he was admitted to the order of priest, and was appointed evening
lecturer in the cathedral, and on the 2nd of August, in the same year,
he was married to Mary Hume, third daughter of Deputy-General Commissary
Thompson, and went to Nova Scotia, where he was appointed rector of
Fredericton, and also chaplain of the troops and Legislative Council.
After three years sojourn there he resigned, and returned to Quebec, and
on his arrival was appointed bishop’s official and officiating clergyman
of Quebec. He commenced life well; his earliest noticeable act was to
establish intimate relations with the “Venerable Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, and for Propagating the Gospel.” His second was to
establish, at Quebec, national schools for boys and girls. Early in
January, 1818, he commenced as a simple missionary, and afterward
continued as archdeacon to visit the outlying portions of the diocese.
Such work he found, to the end of his career, to be full of attraction
and encouragement, for in heart and soul he was the _beau ideal_ of a
missionary. In 1819 he received the degree of D.D. from the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and was appointed a member of the “Board for the
Advancement of Learning in Canada.” In 1821 he became rector of Quebec
and archdeacon of Lower Canada. In 1823 he was nominated honorary
professor of divinity and principal of McGill College, Montreal. In 1825
he went to England, his chief object being to represent the claim of the
Anglican church in the matter of the clergy reserves, and also to
express his father’s wish to be relieved of a portion of the cares of
his bishopric. The suggestion he made was that the diocese of Quebec,
which covered nearly half a continent, should be divided into two parts,
each to be a separate bishopric; or, if this proposition was not acceded
to, he suggested that the Rev. Dr. Stewart be associated with his father
in the administration of the See. These plans, however, were set at
naught by the death of his father, which event occurred on the 18th of
June, 1825, while he was yet absent in the motherland, and Rev. Dr.
Stewart succeeded Rev. Jacob Mountain as Bishop of Quebec. Ten years
passed slowly by, and in 1835 the archdeacon, the subject of our sketch,
again went to England, his objects being the same as before—the
settlement of the clergy reserve question, and the necessity of
procuring further episcopal assistance in the diocese. Bishop Stewart
had broken down, even as his predecessor had done before him, and was
most anxious that the archdeacon, “whom he dearly loved and called his
‘right hand,’ should be appointed suffragan.” “This duty,” says his
biographer, “the latter was more than disinclined to accept, for his
desire from first to last was to serve, not to rule. He only yielded
when Bishop Stewart emphatically declared he would have no one else.” He
was consecrated coadjutor on the 14th of January, 1836, under the title
of Bishop of Montreal. On the 22nd of September, Bishop Stewart went to
England, and did not return, for, becoming weaker and weaker, he died in
the following year. Thus, despite his wishes to the contrary, the
subject of our sketch became the third bishop of the undivided diocese
of Canada. Rev. George Jehoshaphat Mountain was a true and humble-minded
Christian; all the events of his life go to prove this. While his
devotion to the sick and suffering at Quebec, in 1832, when the cholera
rushed like a cyclone from Grosse-Isle to the mainland, and hundreds of
homes were made desolate, renders his name well worthy of record among
the great and good of our land, and again his light shines before the
world in 1847, when typhus fever, the result of the famine in Ireland,
was imported into Canada. It is written: “The Anglican clergy, few in
number, with devoted zeal, took their duty at Grosse-Isle week about,
the bishop taking the first week. Most of the clergy sickened, and two
of them died of the fever. The trial, we may imagine, was acute enough,
for in the summer of 1847, upwards of five thousand interments took
place at the immigrants’ station at Grosse-Isle. ‘No one liveth to
himself or dieth to himself,’ wrote the heroic bishop. There was
chivalry as well as gentleness in his nature which, like expressed
virtue, communicated itself to all.” Bishop Mountain served his God as a
minister of the gospel for fifty years, and died on the morning of the
feast of the Epiphany, 1863, deeply respected and beloved.
* * * * *
=Blair, Hon. Andrew George=, Attorney-General and Premier of New
Brunswick, was born in Fredericton, N.B., on the 7th March, 1844. He is
of Scotch descent. He was educated at the Collegiate School, in
Fredericton. He chose law as a profession, and after spending the usual
time in study, was called to the bar in April, 1866, and successfully
practised for some years. In 1878 he entered the political arena, and
was returned to represent York county in the House of Assembly of New
Brunswick, at the general election of that year. A petition, however,
having been filed against his return, he resigned the seat, and on the
issue of a new writ, was re-elected on the 14th November of the same
year. At the first session of the new house, in February, 1879, he was
chosen leader of the opposition, then consisting of only six members
beside himself, in a house of forty-one. In the last session of that
house, held in 1882, the opposition, under his leadership, had increased
to seventeen. At the general election of that year, 1882, he was
re-elected for his old constituency, and in March, 1883, defeated the
Hanington government, and was called upon to form a new ministry, which
he succeeded in accomplishing in one day. On accepting the office of
attorney-general he again appealed to his constituents on the 24th of
March, and was elected. At the general elections held in 1887 he was
once more elected, at the head of the New Brunswick Legislature as
premier and attorney-general. Hon. Mr. Blair is an independent Liberal
in politics; and in religion is an adherent of the Methodist church. He
was married on 31st October, 1866, to Annie E., eldest daughter of
George Thompson, late of the educational department, at Fredericton. The
issue of this union has been ten children.
* * * * *
=Burland, George B.=, President and General Manager of the British
American Bank Note Company, Montreal.—Mr. Burland, the subject of our
sketch, is descended from a long line of illustrious ancestry. There is
an old estate in Cheshire, called “Burland,” after the family, and at
the time of the accession of Edward III. to the throne in 1327, Robert
de Burland held possession in the county of Somerset. John Burland, born
in 1696, married, in 1718, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Claver
Morris, M.D., of the city of Wells. He died November 6, 1746, and left
four sons and two daughters: John Burland, son and heir; Claver Morris
Burland, M.D.; William Burland, fellow New College, Oxford; Robert
Burland; Mary, wife of Rev. William Hudlestone, and Anne, wife of Rev.
William Eater. John, the eldest son, was of Baliol College, Oxford,
where he entered in 1740. In 1743 he went to the Middle Temple, and was
called to the bar in 1746. In 1762 he was made sergeant-at-law; in 1773
he was given the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws; in 1774 he was
knighted and sworn one of the Barons of the Exchequer in room of Baron
Adams. This he enjoyed but one year and eleven months, and died February
29, 1776, by the rupture of a blood vessel in his brain, as he was
sitting in company with his brother, Robert Burland, and his intimate
friend, Colonel Charles Webb. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, where
a handsome monument, with the following inscription, is erected to his
memory: “Near this place are deposited the remains of the Hon. Sir John
Burland, Knt., LL.D., one of the Barons of his Majesty’s Court of
Exchequer; as a man, valued and beloved, as a judge, honoured and
revered. He died suddenly on the 29th February, 1776, aged 51 years.”
This gentleman married, in 1747, Lætitia, the daughter of Wm. Berkeley
Portman, of Orchard Portman, and Anne, his wife, only daughter of Sir
Edward Seymour, of Maiden Bradley, baronet, speaker of the House of
Commons, and comptroller of the household of Queen Anne. George B.
Burland, of Montreal, is descended from this family, and was born at
Loggan Hall, in the county of Wexford, in the year 1829. His father,
Benjamin Burland, was born in 1779, and educated for the medical
profession. He married, in 1806, Belinda Roe, daughter of Robert Roe, a
gentleman of ample wealth, and owner of large estates in Queen’s county.
He sailed for Canada in July, 1840, and died in 1842. His uncle was one
of the first to afford relief to the sufferers in the great famine of
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